Sanctuary
by Jack Hawksmoor
Summary: Something is hunting Sarah and Jareth, and they need to stick together if they want to survive. J/S
1. Chapter 1

Sanctuary

Ch 1

Sarah was cooking Ramen noodles in the microwave when she heard a frantic pounding on her door. Her heart sank. There were, in her experience, many different kinds of knocks, and they all meant different things. There was the authoritative, door rattling knock of a policeman demanding entry, the tentative tap of an old friend, the careless rapping of a bored high-schooler selling raffle tickets. This was none of those. This was a desperate plead for entry. This was a friend running from his psycho ex-girlfriend; This was her neighbor Rose after she took too much.

This was an evening spent hiding sharp knives, offering lots of liquids and aspirin, listening to a shrieking lunatic stand cursing outside her window. She'd ended up in St. Louis buying size seventeen shoes for a drag queen one night, after a knock like that...

With a weary sigh of responsibility, Sarah trudged over to her front door, threw the lock, and flung her door open before whoever-it-was broke it down.

"_What_-" Sarah began to snap, and her voice died in her throat.

On the other side of her door stood the Goblin King. Sarah clung to the door, momentarily staggered.

He looked worried and threadbare and precisely as beautiful as she'd remembered him.

What..._the hell_...

The ordinary stretch of the hallway behind him seemed sinister and strange, the angles coming together in a way that made her sick to her stomach. There were more shadows than there should be, and they clung to him, giving her eyes the suggestion of him without the substance. The everyday place looked utterly bizarre and magical, as if he'd brought the impossible along with him.

"Invite me in," Jareth demanded, but to her surprise, his voice was rough and desperate. He put his hands on the doorframe, leaning toward her but not crossing the threshold. His eyes bored into her as if he was trying to force her to obey him through sheer willpower alone.

"Like hell," Sarah squeaked, giving him a disbelieving, you-should-know-better look. There was something on the stairs. A noise. Something coming up, and the sound it made lifted all the hairs on the back of her neck.

Jareth turned his head sharply, listening, and then turned back to her with real fear on his face.

"Invite me in," he said, and it was more like pleading now. Sarah felt her face twist in indecision...but the noise it made...good god...

She saw something, a shadow, a suggestion of something moving up to the top of the stairs, and her heart stopped dead. Something in her mind...shredded at the sight of it, and Jareth, who had turned to look, made a harsh, choking sound.

She met his eyes in a moment of complete, terrified, mutual understanding.

"Come in," she gasped, yanking the door wide. Jareth, all pride forgotten, ran for it, and that thing tore up the stairs after him. Jareth ran through her doorway like all the hounds of hell were chasing after him, and seeing the thing twisting horrifically in the yellow light of her apartment hallway, Sarah decided that she wasn't far off.

With a heartfelt scream of terror, she tried to slam her door shut. At the last second a something shot through the gap and grabbed Jareth by the shoulder. Not an arm, Sarah thought with rising hysteria as the ward over her door flared white hot and Jareth bellowed in pain. Not a hand...A limb, thought Sarah as she grabbed the closest thing handy, which happened to be an umbrella propped up by the door. The thing made an impossible, monstrous sound of rage as her wards sizzled, and Sarah lifted the umbrella over her head and started to beat at the offending limb with every ounce of strength she had.

The limb started to burn, and Jareth did something that caused a lot of sparks and made the entire building lurch out from under Sarah's feet. She fell on her ass, the limb snapped back through the door, and Jareth caught himself on her table and kicked the door shut after it.

Sarah lay panting for two breaths before her brain jumpstarted and she threw herself at the door, slamming the locks home with dexterity born of raw adrenaline.

She fell away from it, onto the floor, as the thing pounded at the wood from the other side. She and Jareth watched the door for several seconds as if it held all their answers.

The pounding stopped. Sarah saw Jareth slump a little in relief. They sat for a moment in sweet silence, each absorbing the fact that they were not, after all, going to die in the next few minutes. Sarah leaned back on her hand. Jareth sat on the floor, and when he lifted his eyes she couldn't help but notice he looked rather bemused to find himself still alive.

"Hello again," Sarah said with a faint smile, deciding she was game. "Can I get you some tea?"

Sarah's umbrella was on fire, and she smacked it on the floor a few times to smother it.

Jareth's eyes went wide, and for a moment he looked like he was in serious danger of laughing out loud.

"You know," he said, fighting a sharp, feral grin, "I honestly didn't think you'd let me in." Jareth drew his knee up, lounging in an enviably graceful way on her rather dusty hardwood floor. He shook his head once, almost looking disapproving.

Sarah's eye was drawn to a streak of red on his white shirt. A bright, blobby stain across his chest. It looked like he'd put on a clean shirt over a fresh wound.

Unease blossomed fully formed in her heart. There was something wrong with this. He wasn't acting-

"I didn't think you would be so stupid," Jareth said quietly, suddenly oddly sober. Sarah's unease rippled like a living thing around her heart. He was just sitting there, the picture of a desperate man looking for help, but something in the quality of his stillness was telling her to run. Run, run, here comes the big bad wolf...

Idiot, that thing had been after him. The big bad wolf was outside. He wasn't here to...

Then Sarah heard a sizzle from the living room.

"Windows," she hissed then, stiffening. She scrambled to her feet and took off running, not waiting to see if Jareth was on the same page. She reached the first window just as her wards flared again.

Sarah had been enjoying loft living for several years now, and her apartment was light and airy and had many huge windows. Over each window a horseshoe was carefully tacked, painted over white to look innocuous. The metal flared as she approached, scorching the wall as something moved out in the darkness. Sarah yanked hard on her blinds, sending them crashing down and running swiftly to the next window, and then to the next.

She saw Jareth at a window in the corner, tugging somewhat awkwardly at the string that controlled her window treatments. Obliging, they descended with a rattle.

"The bedroom!" Sarah said, gesturing toward the hallway. Jareth took off at a run, and Sarah noticed for the first time that he was limping a little. Sarah closed off the last window and stepped back, holding her breath. Her wards held, smoldering, as the thing outside moved between her building and the streetlight outside, sending a ripple of shadow across the small gaps in her blinds.

Resolutely, Sarah retraced her steps and closed each of her curtains with a snap. The wards would hold the beast outside, and now that it was blocked from sight, it couldn't catch them and entrance them into inviting it inside.

At least, she thought it couldn't...Sarah realized with a chill that it was very quiet. Had it caught Jareth while he was trying to shut it out?

She made a mad dash for her bedroom, catching herself on the doorframe with her heart in her throat. Jareth was standing very still in the center of her room. The blinds and curtains were shut.

"Jareth?" Sarah said quietly, horror blooming in her heart. It had gotten him. It had...

Jareth turned to look at her, his face and eyes normal, looking sharply annoyed.

"Who told you my name?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes. Sarah slumped a little in relief. She didn't know what she would have done...

"Hoggle," she said faintly, not thinking. "What were you doing in here, all alone?"

Jareth glanced back at the wall, and Sarah froze, blood surging to her face.

"Oh," she said weakly. "Forgot that was there." She rubbed at her cheek, embarrassed. Jareth approached the wall almost reverently. Painted on it was a mural of the labyrinth that nearly took up the whole wall. It was the first view she'd gotten of it, and it had made an impression.

_'Do you still want to look for him?'_

Sarah came up behind him as he lifted a hand, not quite touching it.

"It's not quite right, I know. I had to do it just from memory," Sarah explained, almost apologizing.

"No," Jareth said sharply, and Sarah lifted her eyebrows, startled. "No," he continued softly, as if to himself, "It's just as I remember it..."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked curiously, frowning.

Jareth stiffened, snatching his hand back as if she'd caught him doing something private. He turned away from the sprawling scene on the wall and pushed past her out into the hallway, ignoring her question.

As he passed her, his eyes flicked to her face, and then away. Sarah took a step back, shocked by the force of the emotion on his face. She stared after him, stung and bewildered.

She was sure she'd saved his life, letting him inside. She was even more certain, after catching the look in his eye, that Jareth was furious with her.

She stood there for a moment, hunting for a reason. He couldn't possibly be that upset just because she'd used his name. Of all the ridiculous...there was a freaking monster outside, and he was throwing a tizzy. Sarah rolled her eyes at the empty room, and went out into the hall after him.

The light out there was better, and with his back to her, Sarah saw that what she had first thought was a shadow cast by the folds of his shirt was actually another angry red line soaking through the cloth in a graceful sweep across his back. Someone had sliced him up.

"What happened to you?" Sarah asked with a wince.

"I've been away," Jareth said without stopping or looking at her. It was a ludicrous response to the question, and Sarah had her mouth open to challenge him about that when the lights went out.

"Is that thing smart enough to take out the power?" Sarah asked, her voice hushed. She couldn't see a thing.

"Almost certainly," Jareth replied in an extremely dry tone of voice.

He was standing by the couch, so the table she was looking for should be...Sarah made her way carefully in the dark, her hands held stiffly out in front of her like an extra in a cheap Romero knock-off flick. She still cracked her shin on the coffee table.

Wincing, she hobbled over to the item of furniture she was hunting for, yanking open the top drawer and retrieving her flashlight. Against all probability and logic, it was working, and she played the beam of light around her apartment, looking for anything horrible that might have snuck in.

Jareth shaded his eyes, squinting and frowning. There was nothing inside save the two of them. Sarah went to hunt for some candles, and she heard Jareth moving towards the door behind her.

"That's not any kind of answer to a question, you know," she said abruptly, pushing past some old Queen tapes and setting to one side a massive ring of keys,(some of which did not look like they were made to fit into any earthly lock) so she could drag her fingers across the bottom of the cupboard. "'I've been away'," she scoffed. Her hand closed on the smooth wax of several slightly used candles, and she pulled them out, turning to glance back at her guest. She kept the flashlight trained on the ground, so she wouldn't blind him.

"Why is that thing after you?" she demanded.

Jareth looked down at her, and there was something so awful, so completely bleak on his face she wanted to take the question right back.

"It's hungry," Jareth said, his voice grim.

* * *

_Author's note:_

_(Tiny Shirtless Jareth is sulking attractively in the corner)_

_(coaxing)__Come on, this is a brand new story! I can't start ripping your shirt off right out of the gate..._

_(Tiny Jareth gives me a withering, glittery glare)_

_(Relenting) All right I could, but I shouldn't._

"Tacky," _Skeep agrees solemnly. _


	2. Chapter 2

Sanctuary

Ch 2

Sarah almost dropped her flashlight. She stood up sharply, hating the hopelessness on his face.

"It eats...people, then?" she asked, fighting hard against fear. She eyed her umbrella by the door. She had a crowbar...no, damn, she'd left it in the car. There was that extra piece of wrought iron left over from when she'd put her bed together...

"Oh, no," Jareth said quietly, as if he wished it were only that bad. "I imagine that when it gets in you'll be fairly safe. From becoming a meal, at least."

Sarah stepped up beside him, her stomach tightening unpleasantly.

"It wants you," she said, touching his arm lightly. The wound under his shirt was still bleeding, soaking into the cloth.

"It wants power. Magic. It wants to feed off me," Jareth said with a terrible hatred in his eyes. "I've been their guest for..." his face fell. "I'm sure how long now. Years."

Sarah took a step back, her mind groping with the horror of that idea.

"They locked you up," Sarah said, her mouth dry.

"Oh, yes," Jareth said, and there were terrible, terrible things on his face.

God, his eyes...what had they done to him? She found herself suddenly wrestling with a strange, enigmatic pang of guilt. Sarah had been living in her apartment for years, happy and content while he...

Sarah had a thought that she hated.

She gritted her teeth, outraged. Sarah hadn't heard from her friends in ages. One day they'd simply stopped coming. She'd thought that perhaps the Goblin King had put a stop to it, or worse, that they'd forgotten her. Now...it sounded like her friends had stopped coming about the time when that beast and his friends had kidnapped the King, and something told her it wasn't a coincidence.

She thought of Hoggle, and sweet Ludo, trying to deal with one of those things outside.

"It won't get in," she growled. "I won't let it, I promise."

Jareth looked startled.

"You...are going to protect me," he sounded like she'd genuinely caught him off guard.

"Yes," Sarah said stoutly, "at least until you can get back to the labyrinth."

Just like that, Jareth was furious again.

"The labyrinth," he said in a mocking tone of voice. There was something in his face, though, that was different. Maybe it was because she'd offered her help, but whatever it was, Sarah could tell that he wasn't angry at her now. He was just angry. "The labyrinth!" he shouted, making her jump.

"There is no labyrinth," Jareth hissed.

Sarah's mouth fell open as her mind fumbled with that. Before she could process it, something began to beat at the front door again. The words above her door burned white-hot, shooting sparks. Both she and Jareth flinched back a little from the heat.

They grabbed onto each other, unthinking. The monster howled at the door. Two people against the Big Bad Wolf. Jareth's temper wilted at the presentation of more immediate problems.

"It won't hold," he said tensely, as if he was a plumber giving a professional opinion. He frowned, squinting to examine the brightly glowing letters. "What _is_ that? A spell?"

Arching above her door, glittering brightly from the attack outside, was a complete mural done in silver of a particular set of gates from a particular story that Sarah had spent many hours reading. There were words written on it, but they weren't written in English.

Sarah blushed beet red, glancing at the words and wishing very hard that he hadn't noticed them.

Speak Friend.

For a moment, the words shone like a star.

"It's from the Lord of the Rings," Sarah said, her face hot. "You know, 'speak, friend, and enter'." she added weakly. "The power comes from the belief, and lots of people love that story, so I figured, why not?" It had taken her hours to get exactly right, standing on a stool with the book in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Silver paint did not come out in the wash. Plus, everyone who came over asked about it and gave her weird looks.

She still thought it was worth it.

"I see." Jareth said, sounding rather fondly amused, almost as if he could see her thoughts. "Clever of you." He did not try to sound like he meant it. He smiled a rather sharp smile and looked away casually, as if she wouldn't notice he was trying not to laugh at her.

Sarah was abruptly reminded that the man in front of her had seen her at fifteen, in her little princess dress, prancing about and trying to act like a lady to be reckoned with. She put a hand to her face and sighed.

"It should be all right to shoot anyone who knew you between the ages of thirteen and seventeen," Sarah said wearily. "It would save everyone so much embarrassment..."

A particularly heavy blow hit her door, and they both jumped. Sarah found herself clinging to him without really remembering when she'd started.

"On the contrary," Jareth said, rubbing gently at her arms, "It's comforting to see that some things don't change." He was holding on to her, and she was abruptly presented with a sense memory she didn't know what to do with. Jareth smelled fantastic. He'd always smelled fantastic, but she'd managed to forget about it somehow. Self-preservation, probably. Trying to save herself from dwelling endlessly on the brief moments she'd gotten close enough to him to notice it.

It was like summer storms and cotton candy and Christmas...Jareth smelled like dreams, and it was unjustly intoxicating. The scent roused a seldom-visited part of her mind and the memory of what it had felt like to dance in his arms reached out of her past and walloped her across the head.

Jareth's eyes widened a little. Sarah realized with horror that she had a rather stupid expression on her face.

The pounding stopped, and Sarah patted lightly at his chest, relieved more for the distraction than the end to the assault. She avoided the area that was staining his shirt, but looked up at him pointedly.

"You're bleeding all over yourself," she told him. Jareth glanced down sharply and his eyebrows went up.

"Ah. Yes, I see that." He said it as if he really hadn't noticed and couldn't care less. He looked up at her hesitantly, as if to check her face for a return of her dopey expression. Sarah did not oblige him.

"Do you...want something for that?" Sarah said hesitantly, one hand going up to delicately lift away the cloth. It stuck to his skin, and she winced in sympathy. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure what she had that would help. Band-aids, certainly, but it didn't look like that would remotely cover it. Besides, they had Snoopy on them. "I could-" she began, not sure how she was going to finish the sentence.

Jareth covered her hand with his, pulled it carefully away from his chest.

"Best not," he advised. "You won't be able to do much to help. It's not going to close."

Sarah thought hard for a moment.

"Magic?" she asked. He nodded once and might have said something, but they were interrupted by the sound of breaking glass.

"Hell," Sarah snarled, and took off running for her hall closet. She yanked open the door as the horseshoe over her broken window flashed brightly enough to illuminate her whole apartment. She grabbed a handful of sporting equipment --a tennis racket, a hockey stick-- and flung them unceremoniously into the hallway, shoving coats aside and lunging for the back of her closet.

"Sarah," the warning came from behind her. She could smell the paint on her wall burning.

"Aha!" she crowed, and brought out a heavy piece of twisted wrought iron that should have gone on her bed, if she could have figured out how it went in. Jareth held out a hand to take it from her.

Surprised, she handed it over gingerly, expecting it to hurt him somehow. He hefted it experimentally, showing no ill affects. Shouldn't it hurt him?

Maybe that was silver bullets, she thought, trying to remember. Of course, he was wearing gloves...

He smiled in grim satisfaction and crossed her apartment in four long strides. He hesitated by the broken window, waiting for her ward to react again. It wasn't a long wait, and he brought the iron bar forward in a sharp stabbing motion. He hit something solid that roared and fell away from her window. Jareth kept hold of the bar, bracing himself, and it dripped smoking gore when he pulled it back inside.

Sarah gaped at him, impressed. Jareth set the gross end of it against her kitchen floor, leaning on it casually. He regarded her kitchen table for a moment.

"Tell me," he said, glancing back at her with casual grace. "Have you any nails?"

She did, in fact she had a whole box of them, and a hammer to boot. She helped him prop her kitchen table up against the window frame so he could nail it in place. The monster outside was oddly quiet while they worked, as if it had run away to lick its wounds.

"Do you think we're safe for a while?" Sarah asked, bracing herself to take some of the strain off her arms while Jareth pounded away.

"A short while," Jareth muttered. "It will go to fetch reinforcements, now that it knows I'm trapped here."

"Maybe," Sarah huffed, "you could make a break for it. I've got these keys that I'm really not supposed to use, but...well, they can get us a door to some pretty out-of-the-way places."

Jareth hesitated, then went back to hammering.

"They would follow," he said with a sigh. "And I would be caught out in the open." He paused again, and looked down at her underneath his arm. His face was cool but his eyes were interested. "Us?" He prompted.

Sarah studied her shoes for a moment.

"Well," she said, and stopped. After a moment of thought, she decided to ignore his question. "We couldn't go to the labyrinth," Sarah said, her voice not quite a question and not quite a statement. "But there are other places we could go and hide."

Jareth stopped hammering for a moment, going still.

After a long moment, Sarah tried to crane her neck to look.

"Are you done already?" she asked curiously.

"No." Jareth said quietly, and stopped for a breath or two. "No, we couldn't go to the labyrinth." He sounded as if he was very carefully controlling his temper, and Sarah decided to push her luck.

"What happened?" she asked softly. She was almost afraid to hear the answer. Maybe it was a total lie, maybe the labyrinth was fine and he was just putting her on, but something told her that whatever the truth was, the answer to the question she'd just asked would be something she wouldn't like to hear at all.

After a moment, Jareth resumed hammering, ignoring her question. Sarah let this go on for a bit until she was reasonably certain the table was attached to the window frame, and wouldn't fall if she let go of it.

"Jareth," she said, and pressed on when he didn't flinch or rage at her use of the name. "After I solved the labyrinth I could call on my friends. I did call on them for years. One day they stopped coming." She stepped around the table legs, looking up into his eyes. "You're telling me the labyrinth is gone now. Are they dead?"

Jareth looked down at her, and for a moment he seemed very cold. Very inhuman.

"If they're lucky," he said quietly.

Sarah jerked back, the words hitting her as solidly as if he'd slapped her.

"You tell me what's going on," she breathed, shaken. "You tell me right now or you can get out."

Jareth gave her a brief look of pity that did more to frighten her than anything else that had happened all night.

* * *

_Author's Note: Finally, right?  
_

_EClaire W- Yes._

_Leben ist Magie- The ex-girlfriend is real. So is Tiny Jareth, Skeep and the Daleks. And the Loch ness monster. He's a very sweet monster, sent me a box of caramels at christmas last year...  
_

_yshtabi- Jareth is not a Vamp. He does not need the extra charisma to get girls to swoon over him._

_Sintar- what, doesn't everybody have wards in their house? Heavens, anything might get in._

_(Tiny Jareth gives me a haughty look) _

_"Not you," I say hurredly. (Jareth returns to poking at a small blue box that has appeared on the dresser labeled "Police Public Call Box". The small Blue Box whirrs rather angrily at him)_


	3. Chapter 3

Sanctuary

Ch 3

He stepped away from the wall and began to walk around her, making her turn her head so she could keep him in sight. He stopped on his own, as if he'd only been searching for the correct light to view her in.

"Oh, Sarah," he sighed, shaking his head just slightly. He folded his arms over his chest, leaning elegantly against her kitchen counter. "My kingdom has been destroyed, by those creatures and others like them. They have always been there, and I have always kept them at bay." He smiled in a thin, extremely disturbing fashion. "One of my duties of office, as it were."

Sarah shifted from one foot to the other, feeling jumpy in her own skin.

"Always," she repeated. "Always is a long time. What changed?"

Jareth lowered his head, and looked at her. He said nothing, but he kept staring at her, until Sarah's unease blossomed into a dull panic.

"Tell me," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "In all your tales, all your fairy stories," he nodded at the brightly gleaming silver painting over her door, "When the villain has been vanquished, does he go on to continue his wicked ways? Does he prosper and live a long and fruitful life?"

Sarah's eyes were wide. Jareth dropped his arms to his sides, his hands curled into tight fists.

"Does he?" Jareth demanded, a crack in his composure showing a bright hot anger bubbling just under the surface.

"No," Sarah said, very quietly. She took a step toward him. Villain suddenly seemed a rather...harsh term for what he'd been to her. "You said you'd only done what I wanted," she murmured. Jareth stiffened, his eyes flicking up to meet hers, and for a crazy moment she thought she saw...

No. That would be...that would be ridiculous.

"I played my part, Sarah, and now I am reaping the rewards," He turned away from her, so she couldn't see his face any more. "I am not the power I once was." He sounded very tired all of a sudden.

"You're saying it's my fault," Sarah said, with a cold little shiver down her spine. Jareth looked at her sharply.

"Oh, no," he said firmly, almost with relish. "This has happened entirely because of me." For the first time, Sarah got the impression that a good portion of that anger festering under the surface was directed at himself.

She stood there in her kitchen, breathing rapidly for a moment.

"Can you," she said faintly, thinking fast, "Can you show me...anything that would prove..." she hesitated.

That you're not a liar, she finished in her head. Jareth paused, seeming to weigh her words, and then his lips curved up into a little smile. It was not a friendly expression.

"Come with me," he said, and stepped around her, snagging her hand. Startled, Sarah allowed him to lead her down the hall toward her bedroom. She stopped at the door. Jareth simply continued inside without her.

He grabbed the glass of water she'd left on her bedside table the night before and approached the mural of the labyrinth she had taken such care in painting. He cocked his head like a bird, and dipped his fingers in the water. Then, in quick, sweeping strokes, he started to mark strange symbols on her wall, dipping his fingers in the glass when they got dry. The water showed in darker streaks on the mural.

Curious, Sarah stepped inside, approaching him cautiously as he worked.

"What are you doing?" she asked him tentatively. Jareth stopped, taking a breath. He turned his head, though he didn't quite look at her.

"What you wanted," he replied, and made two more long streaks on her wall. "As ever."

Sarah shot him a startled look.

He stepped back from his labors with a little satisfied sound and raised his hand, palm outstretched toward the mural. Sarah drew closer, until she was standing beside him, her eyes flicking from his hand to her wall. Something was going on, something that was making her skin prickle and her nose itch. A ripple of distortion passed over the picture of the labyrinth, like a hand trailing over the surface of a shallow pond. Sarah caught her breath.

"What is it?" she murmured softly, eyes wide.

The picture, as if answering her, came to an echo of life; The painted trees shifted in an imagined breeze, like an artfully done cartoon playing out in front of her. It was only a moment, a brief flash, like a memory whose colors were still bright. Then the sky went dark. Shadows crept out over the land. The plants withered, and terrible beasts wheeled screeching across the sky.

"What is," Jareth said, his voice thick. The wall went completely black.

Sarah jumped, and half reached out, as if she could somehow make the picture better again.

"No!" Jareth grabbed her as if she'd been trying to wander out into traffic or something, pulling her sharply back away from the wall. She looked up at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He made a sharp, frustrated sound and turned back, tossing the remainder of the water in the glass at the terrible black emptiness that had been her mural.

Sarah saw with a detached kind of horror that the darkness had started to creep up over her ceiling. It was spreading with black, reaching tendrils as if it was trying to devour her room. When the water hit the wall it boiled instantly with an almost angry sound, steaming. The evaporated cloud of water ate at the darkness, leaving a bare patch of wall behind, and Jareth started to try and drag her from the room.

"Wait, what-" Sarah protested, digging her heels in like a recalcitrant cat. Jareth turned, grabbing her firmly by the shoulders.

"We need to go. Now." His eyes were wide and he spoke fast. Sarah hesitated for a breath and nodded, relaxing a fraction. Jareth slid his hands down her arms and pulled her toward the door using both hands. Curious and unnerved, Sarah started to turn to look behind her, but Jareth clamped down swiftly on her fingers.

"Don't," he warned, deadly serious. "Don't look back."

The words trailed down her spine with ice cold fingers. Sarah fixed her eyes on Jareth's and did not let them stray a millimeter. She knew too much about fairy stories. 'Don't look back' were words with dire consequences, in those kinds of stories. Sarah did not fancy the idea of being turned to stone, or struck blind, or any other of a hundred terrible things she could think of as the unfortunate result of ignoring those words.

She kept her eyes locked with Jareth's, and tried not to let her hands shake. He kicked at something, and she heard a thump behind her, but didn't look.

Sarah must have known before, that Jareth had eyes that were two different colors. However, like his smell, it was something that she must have made herself forget. Suddenly finding herself staring intently into them, it was something that surprised her anew. Fascinated, she stepped closer. They were lovely.

Jareth got a strange look on his face, in those lovely eyes, as she watched him. Almost...pained.

"Sarah," he sighed, smoothing his thumbs over the back of her hands. They were in the hall, she realized with a start. Her bedroom door was shut. She didn't remember going out into the hall.

She looked back at her door for a long moment, thinking of the darkness within. Sarah's eyes were stinging, and she blinked them hard. Hoggle, and brave Sir Didymus, dead...

_If they're lucky..._

"This is my fault, isn't it?" Sarah said, turning to Jareth, tilting her head. The angle let a tear slip free to trail back into her hairline. Jareth lifted his head sharply, anger warring with something much softer, fighting for expression on his face.

"Oh, no," he said, and for a moment the anger won out. "No...this is my fault," Jareth stroked her cheek, staring at her for a long moment. Then his voice gentled, shocking her terribly.

"This is all my fault," he sighed, and leaned forward, and kissed her.

The affect was something like grabbing onto a live wire. Sarah stiffened, inhaling a sharp breath through her nose. His lips parted against hers, just slightly, and good god, the way he smelled was nothing..._nothing_ compared to the way he tasted. Sarah made a slightly strangled sound and opened her mouth, not thinking at all. Not wanting to think at all.

She was only certain that she wanted another helping of that, please.

Jareth hesitated for a fraction of a second and then he crushed her to him, his tongue in her mouth, half lifting her right off her feet. Sarah fisted her hands in his hair, all that beautiful hair...He was kissing her like she was all he'd ever wanted and she didn't know what to do with that. She didn't know how she could take it, it was so raw. It felt wonderful, and terrifying, like trying to catch a storm in her bare hands. So she grabbed him and just held on tight. He groaned into her mouth, turning and pushing her up against the door to her linen closet.

Crazy...this was...absolutely...

Something was making a racket, pounding at her front door, and she might have wondered about that but Jareth pressed up against her roughly and her mind was suddenly on other things. She could tell just exactly how pleased he was to be kissing her, and she abruptly felt a tingly flush to all the right places. His hands were sliding up the back of her top. The leather was soft and warm against her skin, and she really ought to stop him now...he really ought to stop her now...She spread her fingers underneath the loose collar of his shirt, finding the skin beneath smooth and unblemished and pleasing to the touch. His shirt was a bit damp and clammy, so she pushed it aside, not sure why that struck her as something important, something she should notice...

He slid his tongue along hers and the taste of him was just too good. The heavy, sweet scent of summer evenings. Pinwheels and lace, wine and candy. Dreams. Sarah suddenly wondered distractedly whether she had anything they could use...god, she didn't do this, she didn't think she had anything...maybe a stray condom, in her nightstand...

Damn! She thought sharply. There were freaking monsters in the bedroom. Figured.

Then Jareth pushed against her with his hips, and the sensation was so much more concentrated, so much more intense than she was prepared for, she actually felt her heart clench up and skip a beat.

He froze, and tore his mouth from hers. It actually felt like something tearing, and Sarah heard herself making a soft, inarticulate sound of protest. But Jareth had turned to look toward her front door, and Sarah realized somewhat belatedly that something was once again trying to break in. There was a bright glow and a burning smell coming from her living room, in addition to the dull sounds of appendages beating on wood.

She heard another window break, and cursed, pushing herself out of Jareth's embrace. They both ran for the living room, stepping over the mess she had left lying on the floor in front of the hall closet. Sarah paused at the threshold, hissing out a breath between her teeth.

Every ward she had was lit up like a Christmas tree. Her door was shuddering in the frame. There was glass all over the floor, and one of her curtains was on fire, as was the serpentine appendage that was edging inside around it.

Jareth had left the wrought iron in the kitchen, she realized with a pang, and started to run for it. Jareth snagged her before she got two steps, pulling her back.

"What-" Sarah began with a frown.

"I can handle this," Jareth said with cool determination. Sarah lifted her eyebrows in exasperation and spread her hands as if to say 'what the hell are you waiting for'. Jareth gave her a sharp, bare smile and took a step away from her, tilting his head back and shutting his eyes.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, her nose started to itch. A second later, Jareth exploded.

Sarah flinched back as a bubble of flame burst out from him, searing her retinas. It passed through her with a wicked jolt and spread out, licking and crackling over her walls and ceiling. A hot wind followed it, whipping her hair back. After a moment the flame seemed to soak into the drywall, glowing in a strange, swirling pattern before disappearing entirely. Sarah blinked up at the ceiling, and then looked sharply to her front door. She could still hear something beating at it, trying to get in, but the sound was muffled, as if it came from very far away.

Her curtain was still smoldering, but the...tentacle...had vanished, and all her wards began to fade from white-hot heat, cooling down through orange and red. The whole place was probably going to stink of brimstone for weeks.

Jareth was standing in the middle of it as if frozen in place.

"Wow," Sarah said, impressed. Then Jareth took a single, stumbling step back and Sarah's eyes went wide. She dove forward just in time to catch him as he fell.

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Kore-of-Myth- Sarah is a bit more friendly to Jareth in this. And as for Jareth's devotion...I'd wait a few more chapters before making any judgments._

_Natsuko37- Hands off my Tiny Jareth! (Tiny Jareth folds his arms, looking very smug)_

_AmericanWoman- here now, no fighting. I love all my fanfic. (Pats Small Blue Box, which gives a pleased whomping sound. Tiny Jareth sniffs down at it aristocratically.)_

_Doro.neko- erm, actually, yes. In a really horrible, horrible way, to be honest. But it was offscreen, so you could just pretend it hasn't happened. _

"La, la la,"_ Skeep offers helpfully, fingers stuffed in his ears.  
_

_LabyLvrPHX- Gotta love Ramen._


	4. Chapter 4

Sanctuary

Ch 4

It was difficult to hang on to him. He was so limp in her grasp that he was inclined to slip free and puddle on the floor. After some fumbling Sarah got a grip on him under his arms, and dragged him over to her couch. He spilled out of her hands onto the dark pillows and managed, somehow, to look artful and posed where he fell. His long blond hair fanned out around him and his limbs draped over the cushions, one hand dangling with casual ease over the edge. He looked like a painting, Sarah decided. With a suggestive name. 'Sins on the Sofa'. Or possibly even 'After the GHB'. People would walk by it and look thoughtful and impressed.

Sarah leaned down and patted his face, trying to bring him around. Jareth didn't even twitch. Apparently out cold. Sarah slid her hands up underneath him and tugged him into a better position on the couch. Her fingers came away bloody, and she winced in sympathy. She'd forgotten about the wound on his back, and now he was laying on it...

After a moment of internal debate, Sarah reached out and rolled him towards her onto his side, bracing his weight against her shoulder. Carefully, she tugged on the back of his shirt, drawing it up. A pale slice of bare flesh was exposed, and Sarah felt her heartbeat speed up a bit. She pulled the shirt higher and only saw more pale, perfect skin. Sarah frowned and checked his bloodstained shirt. The spot on his back that lay under the stain was, as far as she could tell, completely unblemished. She reached out and drew her fingers over his back. He was fine. It didn't make sense.

"Sarah?" came a muffled voice from boob level. Startled, Sarah pulled back a little, looking down. Jareth was looking rather bemused, gazing up at her, his face nestled firmly against her breasts. Sarah squeaked and jerked away from him, almost sending him tumbling to the floor.

"Madame," Jareth said roughly, pushing himself back into the cushions, "it would seem you have the advantage of me."

Sarah glared at him, blushing furiously. She could feel the heat radiating off her cheeks.

"I wasn't-"

"Weren't you?" Jareth cut her off smoothly.

Annoyed, Sarah went on the offensive.

"You said you wouldn't heal, but you have." Sarah gave him a frown. "Your back was bleeding, earlier, but I checked and there's nothing there, now."

Whatever Jareth had been expecting her to say, that wasn't it. He blinked at her a moment, looking startled. Then he reached down and tugged at his shirt, parting the bloodstained cloth to bare the skin beneath. His chest was smooth and unmarred. Looking honestly shocked, Jareth sat up on the couch, one hand reaching behind him in an awkward motion. His face gained the thoughtful intensity of a man with something stuck in his teeth, almost as if he was trying to focus on the wound in his back by discomfort alone. Impatiently, he whipped his shirt over his head and tried to twist around to catch a glimpse of the area in question out of the corner of his eye.

Sarah, suddenly presented with a half-naked Goblin King, stared unashamedly, waiting for her brain to re-boot.

"Sarah," Jareth said sharply, and Sarah jumped. From the look on his face, she was afraid he'd tried to get her attention more than once. "Do you have a mirror?"

"Yes," Sarah said quickly, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the door. Above the table where she usually set her keys was a mirror with a heavy carved frame. She very carefully did not watch his chest muscles flexing as he pushed himself up off the couch.

This was her not watching.

His back, now that she could see it clearly, was very obviously uninjured. He turned to examine himself in the glass, his face deadly serious. He poked at the healthy skin, and then let his arms drop, looking down at her hall table with a frown.

Jareth lifted his head and met her eyes in the mirror, and the expression on his face hit her like a punch to the gut.

Hope.

He looked completely bowled over by it, as if he hadn't seen that particular emotion in a long time. It broke Sarah's heart seeing anyone so obviously used to misery. She came up behind him, her reflection concerned and sympathetic.

"You're...better?" she asked tentatively. Sarah lifted a hand and brushed the skin on his back. Jareth's reflection shut his eyes. When he did not speak, Sarah withdrew, uncertain. "How?" she prodded.

Jareth stepped back from her as if she was dangerous, and the quality of the movement tugged at her memory.

"It doesn't matter," he said. He was backing away from her, retreating, but his voice was smooth and velvety, urging her to believe him.

_'Sarah, beware. I have been generous...'_

"But then you can save them," Sarah said, her eyes lighting up. "Everyone in the labyrinth-"

"No-" Jareth cut in, looking sick.

_'But I can be cruel...'_

"You can re-order time!" Sarah insisted, almost stamping her foot in frustration.

"I can't-" Jareth half-snarled.

"But you're the Goblin King!" Sarah said furiously.

"I was defeated, Sarah," Jareth ground out, stepping close to her, getting in her face. Sarah glared at him and he stopped. Jareth straightened up, looking down his nose at her. His face smoothed out, went cold, as if he was taking hold of his temper with both hands. "I was defeated," he repeated more calmly. "In my world that means something." He stepped away again, tilting his head back a little, looking her over like he'd never seen her before. "And being bested by a young, beautiful, innocent girl?" His voice was matter-of-fact. Forced calm. "A hundred times worse."

Sarah watched him with wide eyes and a sinking stomach. If he was lying to her, then she was no judge of character. "You really can't help, can you?" she said in quiet dismay.

"If I had the power to save my kingdom, I'd use it," Jareth replied with starch, a sliver of his frustration breaking through.

Sarah let her eyes lose focus as she thought hard.

"You have no power over me," she said softly, absently, and Jareth flinched. Sarah turned to him sharply. "But what if you did?"

Jareth's eyes darted to hers.

"What?" he demanded, looking as though he was dreading the answer she might give. It was an odd reaction, but Sarah let it slide.

"What if you had power over me? That would help, right?" Sarah asked, searching his face. He had looked hopeful, for a moment, looking at his healed skin in the mirror. There had to be a way. Maybe being invited into her house had done it partly. They just had to figure out how to get it completely done.

The dread on Jareth's face got stronger, not weaker, but Sarah pressed on.

"So, if you need it, take it." Sarah made a giving gesture with her hands, and Jareth gritted his pointy teeth, his lips pulling back into a grimace.

"You don't know what you're saying," he said. There was a catch in his voice as he spoke that made her want to clear her throat.

"I know I'll be saving my friends," Sarah countered. "So, if I say, 'the Goblin King has all the power over me he needs', then you can save them."

Jareth stared at her for a second of horrified silence, as if she was one of his nightmares come to life.

"No," he breathed, and Sarah didn't think he was answering her.

"What is it?" she asked him with a cold ripple of unease. Why did he look so upset about this? What didn't she know? "You don't have the power to help, but you can take it-"

Jareth darted forward and covered her mouth with his hand, snatching her into a too-tight embrace. "Shh," he said, sounding as shaken as she felt. "You don't know," he added softly.

The only reason she didn't know was because Jareth wouldn't tell her anything, Sarah thought, a spark of anger finally catching. She started to squirm furiously in his grip, pushing at the hand he had clapped over her mouth. It was like shoving at a wall. Sarah made a frustrated, angry sound, but Jareth ignored it, as he ignored her completely futile attempts to push him away from her and maybe blacken his eye for good measure. Though, knowing him, it would only make him look rakish and adorable.

Instead, Jareth tightened his arm around her, and pressed a kiss to her forehead, just over her right eyebrow. The gesture was tender and completely confusing. Sarah went still and glared at him darkly until he finally relented and dropped his hand from her mouth.

"I don't understand you," Sarah said, wiping at her lips. "Why won't you tell me anything? You're the one who brought me into this," she said unhappily, and was startled at the expression that darted across his face for an instant.

Guilt?

Sarah sighed, mystified.

"Can't you see I need to help? Even if it's not my fault-"

"It isn't," Jareth said firmly. "It's mine."

Sarah stared at him for a breath or two. He'd said that before, but she'd gotten distracted before she could ask what he meant by it.

"What have you done?" Sarah asked softly, troubled. Given the way he'd been acting, she wasn't expecting a response, and was more or less musing out loud. In the hallway outside her bedroom he'd said this was his fault. Then, of course, he'd decided the best follow up to that would be to kiss her. Had he done something on account of her, maybe?

As soon as he escaped he came right to her, surely that had to mean something...

"What have you done?" Sarah breathed, poking at the problem, holding it in her hand and trying to look at it from different angles.

"I've destroyed my kingdom, committed treason, and betrayed every one of my responsibilities," Jareth said, startling her. He ticked the examples off on his fingers with a thin, humorless smile. Then he lifted his eyebrows and looked at her pointedly. "Nothing more," he added.

Sarah gaped at him. He couldn't have. He _couldn't.._.

"_You_ destroyed your kingdom," she said slowly, disbelief and outrage rising to the surface and threatening to break free.

"As good as," Jareth said simply, and the bleakness on his face made her ashamed for taking him literally. "My imprisonment was not entirely undeserved."

"For not being strong enough to fight them off?" Sarah asked sharply, more annoyed with herself than with him at the moment. Of course he would blame himself, he was the King.

Jareth stared at her for a long moment, until she started to feel a little bit uncomfortable.

"I saved someone," he murmured finally, as if speaking to himself.

_Me. _The thought was instantaneous and had no reasoning behind it. That didn't change the fact that Sarah was completely, irrationally certain she was right.

_He saved me. _The thought was weirdly pleasing.

"How?" Sarah asked quietly, utterly failing at sounding unaffected. One corner of Jareth's mouth curled up in a sharp mockery of a smile.

"Once upon a time," he said smoothly, folding his arms, and Sarah was surprised into laughing out loud. Jareth watched her, looking very pleased with himself, waiting until he could get a word in.

"There was a beautiful girl," he continued, "who was spoiled and selfish and wished away someone she loved."

Sarah 'tsked' broadly, enjoying herself despite everything.

"Shame on her," she said with a dry smile.

Jareth flashed sharp teeth.

"Oh, but this girl fought to regain the child she'd lost, from the wicked and terrible Goblin King," Jareth said, dropping his arms and taking a step towards her. Sarah mirrored him, moving closer until she was nearly touching him.

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered?" she prompted with a gleam in her eye.

"All the way to the castle beyond the Goblin City," Jareth agreed with a wry twist of his lips. He put a hand out on the table beside them, and it was almost as if Jareth wanted to embrace her but didn't dare. Sarah looked down and watched him as he rubbed his thumb absently over the wood. He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, making her jump. "But when the girl found the child he was out of her reach," Jareth said, his breath soft on the side of her face.

Sarah pulled back, startled, and her eyes darted up to meet his. She'd forgotten that.

"He was," Sarah murmured, remembering.

"The girl was very brave," Jareth said, the warmth in his voice making Sarah's eyes widen. "She jumped."

Jareth paused and Sarah found herself leaning forward in anticipation.

"And then?" she prompted, which really was silly, since she knew exactly what happened next...

"It was too far," Jareth said softly, and Sarah looked at him sharply.

"What?" she asked. She certainly didn't remember _that_. Well, sure, it had been a long drop, and if she'd landed she might've broke her neck but-

Jareth saw the sudden sober expression on her face and nodded.

"Yes," he said to her unspoken thought. "But the Goblin King saw her, and couldn't let that happen. The Goblin King stopped time itself to save her. It nearly tore his castle apart. He saved her, even though he knew that if he did, he might lose the child to her."

"Sounds risky," Sarah said, shaken. She thought of the moment her fall towards Toby had slowed, of the gentle way she'd been set down on her feet. When she'd turned to look around her the King had been there, watching her from the shadows.

He'd looked so tired, Sarah recalled with a little jolt. She hadn't ever really considered why that might be. At the time, Sarah had some sense that it might have something to do with her reaching the center of the Labyrinth, and never gave it a second thought. Not even when he'd claimed to be exhausted living up to her expectations. Sarah had been so sure that he wasn't telling her the whole truth. She just hadn't realized what that might have meant.

"Mmm," the Goblin King agreed, nodding his head. "He didn't care. He knew that if he was defeated he would be putting his kingdom at risk, but he didn't care about that, either." Jareth reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of Sarah's face, making her blink. "He wanted the chance to offer the girl her dreams one more time." Jareth's voice dropped to a whisper. "He wanted her to accept them. He was certain she would. He wanted that so _badly_."

Sarah realized her mouth was hanging open, and hastily shut it.

"I called Hoggle," she said after a long, pregnant pause. "I spoke to him and the others for ages afterwards. If you knew your kingdom would fall, why didn't you come?"

Jareth raised his eyebrows.

"I couldn't," he said, as if she was stupid for suggesting it. Sarah pulled a face. "'You have no power over me,'" Jareth reminded her.

Oh. Duh.

"But," Sarah said with a frown, "you're here now...how..."

Jareth smiled a slow, cold smile.

"I am not the Goblin King anymore. So I am not bound by the Goblin King's restrictions. There are no Goblins to rule over, so," He straightened and made a little flourish with his hands. A silent little 'ta-da, here I am'.

Sarah suddenly had to fight very hard not to snicker. It was ghoulish and strange, given that the goblins in question had probably died horrible deaths, but she couldn't help it. She pressed her lips tightly together for a moment, trying valiantly to straighten her face. When she finally looked up, expecting to see Jareth's disapproval, she got a surprise.

His face was much closer to hers than she was expecting, and his expression was a hell of a lot more admiring. He was looking at her as if the was some rare, priceless treasure. His hand came up, and he brushed his index finger just along the line of her chin. Sarah's eyes widened.

"So cruel," he said gently, approvingly. Jareth darted forward and kissed her before the words penetrated. A quick, electric press of his lips to hers. Sarah froze, realizing what he'd said, but he was already pulling away. Sarah was left with her wires quite thoroughly crossed, being both flushed and pleased and annoyed and indignant all at once.

She lifted her chin, indignant winning out over everything, and gave him a cold look.

"Not compared to some," she said. Jareth had no reaction to that, which was deeply unsatisfying, so Sarah folded her arms and tried something else.

"It was a pretty story," she admitted, tilting her head as if conceding a point. Jareth lifted an eyebrow, looking pleased and smug. "It's a shame the ending was so stupid," she added maliciously.

That got a reaction.

Jareth blinked. A smile flickered over his face, as patently unnatural as a fluorescent light stuttering to life.

"I'm sorry, I must be mistaken. I thought I heard you say you didn't like the ending you chose, but that can't be right." Jareth's voice was mocking and cold, and Sarah suddenly got the distinct feeling of being herded. He was trying to distract her, trying to be obnoxious and keep her off balance so she wouldn't figure something out.

She'd asked him what he'd done that was so terrible. She was trying to find out why he couldn't bear to let her help him. Jareth had said he'd saved her, but he didn't feel bad about it, that was fairly clear. The question was, what had he done that made him so ashamed?

After a moment of thought, Sarah took the high road.

"Don't you read your own stories?" Sarah asked, her voice pleasant and light. "You should have given me a ring before I left."

"What?" Jareth breathed. He froze, staring at her as if she'd just slapped him. No, his expression was much more intense than that. Jareth would probably get a lot of amusement out of Sarah trying to slap him.

Sarah gave him a half smile.

"To put on my pillow at midnight, so I could get back to the labyrinth. Then we could have avoided this whole mess." She was teasing him, but it took him a moment to catch on. His response wasn't quite what she expected. It was almost like he couldn't bear to look at her.

Sarah wondered briefly if it was actually impossible to be nice to the man.

"Though," Sarah added thoughtfully, almost to herself, "maybe a poisoned apple would be more like it."

Jareth winced.

"I don't have any rings, or apples. Or spindles, for that matter." Jareth said quietly, looking grim. He looked her right in the eye, as if steeling himself. "What I have is a knife, and a box."

Sarah was momentarily taken aback. His manner contrasted sharply with the idea that he'd decided to play along, and the disparity troubled her. But then her mind started whittling away at the clues almost despite her. She knew every fairy story pretty much backwards and forwards. It was hard to resist. Who was he? Who had a-

Knife. Box.

Lungs. Liver.

_'...and bring them to her as proof that he has killed her. The huntsman took Snow White into the forest...'_

It was only in the Disney version that they had changed it so the woodsman was sent after her heart. More dramatic, Sarah thought with a growing horror.

"You came right here," Sarah said faintly, feeling all of the color drain out of her face. "It wasn't a coincidence. As soon as you were free, you came right to me. "

_'He raised his knife...'_

"Why?" It was barely a word. More like a puff of breath, but Jareth heard her.

That look was back again on his face. That strange, terrible guilt that had so confused her. God help her, Sarah thought she knew why, now...

_'What if you had power over me?...If you need it, take it...'_

The memory of speaking those words poured down her spine like ice water. She took a single step back from him. Jareth saw, and lowered his head, just a little. Shadows darkened his face.

"You know," he said tightly.

Sarah turned and ran.

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Peeking out from behind several mountains worth of packing boxes, I am covered in paint and clutching a roller. Dimly, from behind me, comes the sound of a lawnmower, a weedwacker, a powerwasher, and a lot of hammering and grumbling from friends drafted into work._

_Now, no growling from the peanut gallery, I've been busy._

"Hard work,"_ agrees Skeep, liberally covered in sparkly geen paint._

_Belmont-Belamy- Oh, BEL! (hugs) I love you too. You rule._

_AmericanWoman- definitely not ridiculous. Sarah can be a bit thick sometimes._

_Natsuko37- (unsucessfully hiding mushrooms behind my back) Gasp! She's discovered my secret. _

_Subtilior- ah, HP Lovecraft. He gave us so much..._

_- Unfortunately, Sarah neglected to get rental insurance, even though Progressive called her twice after ten o'clock at night to try and sell it to her. All Sarah did was curse at them and tell them she was on some kind of list. Oh, the irony..._

_bruwench-(CHOKE) Tiny Jareth, looking VERY smug, swaggers over and leers in your general direction. (both I and Skeep shove paint swatches into our mouths to stop the snickering)_

_NS-Doctor Who? (author blinks innocently) Never heard of him. (said author scowls behind a pair of red and blue x-ray specs, tugging on a pair of trainers, PINK trainers, grumbling...man, here we go with the guy thing again, maybe I need to put hearts and flowers on my avatar or something)...wait. You don't like guys? Like, ever? Huh.  
_

_Skeep looks puzzled. Tiny Jareth strolls over, looking attractive and shirtless. Author pats both males in an affectionate manner._

_blood6theif- yes, but he exploded sexily. That makes it all right._

_Also, for those curious, The ring on the pillow bit was from Beauty and the Beast, and shame on you for only watching the movie._


	5. Chapter 5

Sanctuary

CH 5

"Sarah!" Jareth called after her, sounding weary and resigned and not dangerous at all.

Sarah ignored him and bolted for the kitchen. She heard him following behind her slowly, unhurried. She supposed he had a reason not to be alarmed at her retreat. Though the sound was muffled and far away, Sarah could still hear the faint sounds of monsters outside, trying to break in. She was trapped. It wasn't like she was going to run far.

However, when she snatched up the bar of wrought iron Jareth had left propped up against her kitchen cabinets, and brought it up with a rather violent look in her eye, Jareth finally showed some alarm. He stopped dead and put both his hands up, his eyes going wide.

"Sarah," he said slowly, with the controlled anxiety of a man trying to coax a small child off the roof. He reached out as if he actually expected her to give the weapon to him. "Don't-" Sarah feinted a swing at him and he scrambled back.

"You stay away from me," she snapped. Tough girl. Then she bit her lip. "You were going to kill me," she said, appalled. She didn't sound tough at all that time. She sounded sort of hurt, actually. Sarah had thought he'd...liked her. "All this time-"

"No-" Jareth said sharply, stiffening and dropping his hands a little.

"I let you kiss me!" Sarah hissed, furious and mortified. Then Jareth did something very, very stupid. He smirked.

Sarah narrowed her eyes, aimed for his head, and swung for the fences. Jareth was ridiculously quick however, and jerked back as the metal pole whistled through the air in front of his face. She brought it back in again from her left and Jareth snatched it right out of the air, the iron whacking solidly into his leather-gloved palm.

"I'm not going to kill you," Jareth growled. Sarah pulled hard, trying to wrench the bar from his grip, and the bare metal brushed over the ungloved skin on the outside of his wrist. There was a terrible smell, like searing meat, and Sarah watched in horror as the bar simply sloughed off a layer of his skin where it touched him, burning through it like acid.

Jareth hissed and staggered back from her, curling forward around the wound, his face white with pain. Some fragments of his skin stuck to the pole, disintegrating even as Sarah watched. Sarah made a sick choking sound and dropped it, almost retching.

Not silver bullets after all.

Jareth went down on one knee. Insanely, unconsciously, Sarah made a move to help him, reaching out with one hand. He looked up into her eyes.

Sarah nearly squirmed. It was ridiculous. He was the one who'd been planning to kill her. How had it happened that Jareth was the one who felt betrayed? His eyes flicked down to her outstretched hand, held almost level with his eyes.

"You're going to kill me," Jareth said slowly, as if he just needed to get things straight. Sarah blinked at him, not following him at all. She looked down at her own hand, empty of weapons and reaching to help. Jareth sat down on her floor hard, and laughed.

Sarah winced at the sound of it. It was raw and exhausted and just a hair to one side of a nervous breakdown. Sarah wasn't entirely sure _which_ side.

"You're going to..." Jareth chuckled horribly, and shot to his knees, making Sarah jump. He spread his arms wide. "Go on then, Sarah. Wonderful, cruel Sarah. Do what I can't." He leaned toward her and turned his head slightly, as if offering his cheek for stroking. Or slapping. Sarah pulled her hand back, unnerved and thoroughly confused. She recognized a breakdown when she saw it, but she didn't understand why.

Sarah clenched her fists and paused, startled. She lifted both her hands up, close to her face. Her palms felt gritty. Tilting them in the dim light, she saw they were covered in little specks of iron, from when she'd squeezed the bar as she was swinging it. She looked down at him in guilty dismay. He'd seen the iron on her fingers. God, if she touched him now she'd probably melt his face off.

She clutched her hands to her chest and opened her mouth to explain, but Jareth beat her to it.

"I killed the others without a problem," Jareth said, shocking her silent. "Without a single doubt, because I knew, I _knew_ what would happen if I failed in my duty." He wasn't looking at her. Sarah wasn't even sure he was talking to her. "The skies would darken and my kingdom would fall." He lifted his chin and met her eyes. His expression was very cold. "I fought and I lied, I charmed and I threatened, and I killed every last person who had ever solved my labyrinth, because it was my duty."

Sarah stared at him, something way down deep inside her howling in dismay. She wanted very badly to push this particular truth away.

"How..." she had a catch in her throat, and started over. "How many?" Jareth frowned at her. "People," Sarah snapped. "How many people have you killed?"

Jareth hesitated, and Sarah took a threatening step toward him. So help her, if he didn't answer she _would_ melt his face off.

Jareth looked away from her, clenching his jaw.

"Eleven," he said roughly.

Jesus Christ, he's a serial killer, Sarah thought, stumbling back from him.

"The last was just over a century ago. I could do it to them, because it was necessary." Jareth's voice softened, drawing her eyes to his face. "But not to you," Whatever Jareth saw in her expression bothered him, and he scowled and looked away. "I knew that if I didn't it would be the end of me, and every single imbecilic goblin who called me King. Every day it was more obvious. The darkness crept over the land, and those wretched beasts roamed wild in the streets." Jareth was angry, and obviously half out of his mind, but Sarah was mesmerized by the story and didn't stop him. He leaned toward her.

"Every day, as more of my charges died I knew I could end it."

"By ending me," Sarah said, finding her voice.

"Yes," Jareth said, and sighed wearily. "But still, I couldn't." He got to his feet but didn't approach her. Sarah tried to ignore the steady pat-pat of blood from his wound falling onto the floor. "I was away for so long...I thought, perhaps now I could bear to do it. Perhaps now it would be different." He took a step towards her and said something extraordinary. "You were right, Sarah," he said, stunning her. He lifted his hand, making a fist, the leather of his gloves creaking slightly. "I could turn back time. If I had the power, I could undo it all. Save my kingdom. Save your friends."

Jareth took another step toward her.

"I came here with that end in mind. But when I saw you-" he reached out, slowly, tentatively, and took her hand, the leather warm against her skin. "It was the same," he said softly, lifting her hand by the wrist, turning her palm to rest against his cheek...

Sarah stiffened, jerking her hand back in fright as she realized what he was doing.

"No," she choked. Jareth stilled. He lifted an eyebrow.

"No?" he breathed softly. Sarah pressed her lips into a thin, hard line.

Eleven.

Silently, she shook her head. No.

Jareth leaned forward, bowing his head, and rested his forehead against hers. Sarah shut her eyes, sagging a bit, and tried not to think.

How many thousands were dead now, because of her? If she'd just given up her brother, none of this would have happened, Sarah thought uncomfortably. The part that shocked her was the firm realization half a second later that even if she'd known, she wouldn't have changed her decision. She'd have taken her brother, and let the goblins go hang.

Sure, Sarah would have tried to get her friends out, but...

Jareth was right. She was cruel. And she didn't have a hell of a lot of room to throw stones.

"This is," Sarah sighed softly, "the most insane evening I've ever had."

Jareth smirked and pulled away from her. He reached out, tugging gently on her wrists, coaxing her tightly clenched fists away from where she held them close to her chest. Sarah watched him warily as he uncurled her reluctant fingers and stroked them. His gloves were butter-soft. Jareth carefully pressed her hand in between both of his palms, first one hand, then the other.

When he moved to rest her hand on his chest she balked, struggling with him, but he was quick and strong and her hand ended up on his forearm anyway. Nothing much happened. Sarah flicked her eyes up, opening her mouth to question him.

Silently, Jareth held up a gloved hand and wiggled his fingers in a rather eye-catching way. If he'd had a crystal in that hand, it would have danced for him. Testing, Sarah lifted one of her own hands and rubbed her fingers together. If there were any particles of iron, she couldn't tell.

"Magic gloves?" she ventured, eying him with a faint smile. He inclined his head regally, absently stroking the fingers of her trapped hand. She watched him. He was gentle with her, like she was some precious, delicate thing.

This man was a murderer, Sarah thought. Though, she had to admit, after more than a hundred years, it seemed like some kind of statute of limitations or something would apply.

"Why not me?" Sarah asked quietly, eying the way he was holding her hand. "You said-" she stopped, distressed. "You killed all those people," she said unhappily. "Why not me?" Some part of her was dancing with anxiety as she asked, as if he might suddenly realize he had no good reason and dispatch her on the spot. A smaller, crazier part was thinking that he had kissed her, and maybe...

Jareth's mouth tightened, and he scrutinized her in an extremely intense way. It was a bit uncomfortable, not least because Jareth looked more than half pissed as he did it. He dropped her hand, narrowing his eyes a fraction.

"Don't be so stupid," he said angrily.

"What?" Sarah asked incredulously. He stepped back from her, pointing a finger in her face.

"I won't be toyed with," he growled, and turned his back on her.

Sarah gaped at him for a minute.

"Absolutely out of his mind," she muttered to herself, shaking her head and pushing aside a twinge of disappointment. Had to be it. She put a hand on her hip and breathed out through her nose, grabbing onto her temper and wrestling it to the ground.

She noticed, now that Jareth was sulking silently, that the muffled thumping from outside was getting less muffled.

"Those things outside are getting louder," Sarah said, and was proud that she didn't sound like she wanted to strangle him. Which was nice, because she did.

Jareth didn't respond for a moment, but she could see his jaw working.

"Time is catching up," he said, and she gave him full marks. He didn't sound like he wanted to strangle her, either. He was cradling his wounded arm, though, which made Sarah feel pretty bad about herself. She stepped over to her kitchen counter and ripped off a few paper towels from the roll.

She offered them to him. He glanced down at the wad of white doubtfully, and she pushed it at him in a little 'take it' gesture.

"How long do we have?" Sarah asked, as he pressed the towel to his wound with a wince.

"An hour, or so," Jareth replied. Sarah took a deep breath as her stomach sank. Not long at all.

"Can you do anything else?" Sarah asked, trying to sound tougher than she felt. Jareth kept his eyes on his arm.

"Not so soon," He said simply. "I can make sure," he continued, still not looking at her, "that you're all right, once they get in."

He glanced over at her front door, the silver words arching over it glittering faintly in the candlelight.

"You should wait by the door," he said thoughtfully. "I can turn their eyes so they don't see you for a moment or two. When they get inside you can sneak out behind them."

Sarah listened, the words he spoke somehow tugging at her heart like a physical thing.

"And just leave you here," Sarah said, feeling vaguely sick. Jareth looked up at her and smiled slightly.

"Concern for the villain?" he asked her. "You weren't so worried when you thought I was going to kill you."

Sarah glanced down at his arm. He was seeping blood through the paper towel. She felt bad about that, but should she? Maybe he hadn't been exactly a villain to her, but that didn't mean he wasn't a villain.

Why didn't he kill her?

No, Sarah thought abruptly, that wasn't what he'd said. Not didn't. Couldn't. The question was, why couldn't he kill her? When leaving her alive meant death and suffering for so many...

He was waiting for her to answer him, and the look on his face poked at her memory. He looked like he had in the room full of stairs, after she'd jumped to get to Toby. Exhausted...and achingly hopeful. He'd offered her dreams...

_'He wanted her to accept them. He wanted that so badly.'_

Good God, Sarah thought with a jolt. Sometimes she really was _dense._

"I'm not leaving you here for those things," Sarah said quietly, her heart racing with her abrupt realization. She looked up at him with pale, determined eyes. "We'll figure out a way to fix this. I just need time to think."

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Continuing thanks to Kore-of-Myth, who is my awesome Beta, and Lixxle, for moral support._

_RhiannonoftheMoon- I'm afraid you'll have to get in line behind Natsuko37 _

_futrCSI1490- Shame, shame, know your fairy tales. (Or you'd know the answer to that question:)_

_- 'fraid I don't respond to begging, only bribery. As for 'Sins on the Sofa'..._

_(looks expectantly toward Tiny Jareth, who is leaning artistically against a Small Blue Box. Skeep is in front of him with an easel, fingerpainting something that looks vaguely like a Pollock threw up)_

_You know what? I'll send it to you. (gesturing Tiny Jareth forward. When he catches a glimspe of the painting, it disappears in a shower of glitter)  
_

_Leben ist Magie- the Doctor'll get his turn (patting Blue Box. Blue Box whomps in a pleased fashion) _

_Natsuko37- (Shhh)_

_AmericanWoman- You georgous girl, you. You get the prize for knowing your fairy stories. (It's one key that opens a door to an enchanted world...however, unfortunately, I believe this particular key opens onto Olympus. Though it does come with a golden apple marked 'Kallisti'...)_

_(squinting) What is that, on the horizon? Ah, yes, smut. Fair warning...  
_


	6. Chapter 6

Sanctuary

CH 6

Sarah finished pulling the immediately perishable items out of her fridge and examined the spread she'd laid out on the counter with satisfaction. All things considered, Sarah figured normality was an act of optimism. Cleaning out the stuff that would go bad due to the power outage seemed to qualify.

"Anything look good?" she asked. Jareth lifted an eyebrow and gave her a look that brought to mind trashy romance novels. "To eat," she added hurriedly.

Jareth glanced over the offerings with obvious distaste. He picked up a carton of half-and-half and sniffed the contents. The gesture was so completely human that Sarah had to snicker.

"You want some coffee?" she asked with a smile, offering him an empty mug. Jareth took it, giving her a doubtful look. He filled it about two-thirds of the way with cream, then opened her box of coffee cake and pulled off a chunk with his bare fingers. Sarah watched, startled, as he tore the chunk of sweet bread into little bits and dropped them into his mug of cream.

Toby used to do something similar with milk and saltine crackers. When he was four.

"Okay, gross..." Sarah said. Jareth gave her a bemused look over the rim of his cup, and sipped noisily. Sarah made a face.

She busied herself for a moment, nibbling at some leftover potato salad. Sarah knew she was stalling. She even knew that they didn't have the time for it.

"Thought your way out of this yet?" Jareth asked with annoying perceptiveness. Sarah looked at her hands, listening to the not-as-muffled-as-it-used-to-be pounding on her door.

"Not yet," Sarah said uncomfortably.

"It's all right," Jareth said, lifting his spoon and fishing around in his mug for a bit of cream-sodden sweet bread. He ate it with apparent relish.

_Bleah__._

"This is very...pleasant," Jareth added with a sigh of contentment. "I haven't eaten like this in a long time."

Sarah gave him an odd look.

"Do you need to eat?"

Jareth looked amused. "Everything needs to eat," he said. "The only thing that varies is how often." He took a swallow of his cream, looking more relaxed than Sarah could ever remember seeing him. She nibbled thoughtfully on her lower lip. Jareth seemed to be in an answering-questions kind of mood, and Sarah decided to take advantage.

"You said that if you ran, they would catch you. But what if I could get you close? Really close?"

"To where?" Jareth asked.

"To the labyrinth," Sarah said, leaning forward on the counter. "I haven't got a key for it, but I could get you to a place nearby. If you could get there before they could stop you, and turn back time-"

"Sarah, I don't have the power," Jareth interrupted. He fixed her with a determined glare. "And I'm not going to take it from you."

Was Sarah out of her mind to go a bit warm and fuzzy over that?

"Are you so sure that's the only way?" she asked curiously. Jareth flicked his eyes up, startled. He stared at her for a long moment, as if he was looking for something in her eyes. Whatever it was, he didn't seem to find it.

"For me...yes," he said. He put an elbow on the counter and covered his mouth with his hand, looking thoughtful and rather morose. Sarah felt a pang, realizing she'd somehow managed to spoil his mood.

Just for a second, when he'd looked at her, Sarah could have sworn she'd seen that flicker of hope again. It sort of hurt to see it go out so fast.

"I'm not so sure," she said carefully. "Your wounds healed after I invited you in. There has to be something more to it." She waited expectantly, but Jareth said nothing. He kept his gaze averted, as if he needed to hide what he was feeling.

Sarah had a sudden thought, an idea that made her go cold and start to sweat.

"How much power do you have right now?" she asked, her heart suddenly beating very fast.

In response, he dropped his hand and rested it lightly over the paper towel that was still resting over his wound. It looked like the bleeding had slowed, but the paper towel was now stuck to his arm with clotting blood.

Sarah dropped her eyes with a pang of guilt. She examined her hands as if she'd never seen them before.

"You said you could turn their eyes..." she added weakly.

"To what end?" Jareth asked, sounding weary.

"Could you make me look like someone else?" Sarah asked.

"Sarah, I promise you, they won't see you if I don't want them to-" Jareth began, his voice going shockingly soft.

"Could you make me look like you?" Sarah interrupted. She lifted her eyes. Jareth looked like somebody had given him a good hard smack. "Could you make them think I'm you? You could get away-" Sarah added quickly.

"Absolutely not," Jareth snapped.

"Jareth, you asked me if I was thinking of a way out of this, so now I am. You said that it can't just be me _saying_ that you have power over me. All right, so it doesn't work that way. If I'd said that you had no power over me before I'd run the labyrinth it wouldn't have worked, would it?" she asked.

"No," Jareth replied, as if he was startled that she would even ask. "You wouldn't have really believed it. You wouldn't have earned the right to believe it."

"All right," Sarah said, energized with the sudden certainty that they were getting to the meat of the problem. "So I have to do something more. Maybe, in the bad old days, the only way to fix it was to trick people, to take the power back from them."

"Kill them," Jareth corrected mildly. Sarah winced, but Jareth looked as calm and undisturbed as if she'd been inquiring about the weather. It threw her for a moment. How...not-sorry he was.

It struck her, all of a sudden, how unimaginably old he must be.

"Yes," she forced out. "But I'm trying to help. I don't need to be tricked. I want to give you your power back." Sarah folded her arms, as much to steady herself as anything else. "I just have to earn the right to do it."

Jareth raised his eyebrows.

"I don't seem to have any labyrinths in my pockets for you to run," he said, looking bemused.

Despite herself, Sarah had to choke back a laugh at that. "You have pockets, in _those_ pants?" she asked.

Jareth gave her a wicked look. "Come find out.," he offered with a flash of his eyes.

Dangerous, Sarah thought. She wondered what would happen if she took him up on it. Probably a lot of groping. Then they could lose track of time and get horribly slaughtered when those monsters finally busted their way into her apartment.

That would probably cut down on the opportunity for future pocket-checking. Best hold off, Sarah decided.

"Jareth, look at it like this. I'm asking you to cast a spell on me, to save my friends. I'm trying to make a bargain with you for their lives." Sarah did not miss the way Jareth tensed at the word 'bargain'. She tilted her head a little, eyes wide. "I'm willing to suffer whatever consequences come with that. How much more power over me do you need?"

Would it be enough? God, she hoped so...She was sure no one had ever tried this before. After all, what kind of lunatic would ask the Goblin King to put a spell on them? Especially someone who'd actually solved his labyrinth. Total madness.

Jareth looked like a hungry man being offered poisoned food. Tempted and angry. Sarah continued, her voice much quieter.

"You only need enough power to turn the clock back." She shrugged. "It's worth a shot, right?" If he could fool those monsters into thinking she was Jareth, he could get away. When those things tried to...do what ever they did to feed off him, they'd realize she wasn't Jareth. Maybe they would just leave her and run off after him. Maybe.

Jareth stared at her, his expression disturbed.

"You would do that?" he asked, practically pinning her to the wall with the intensity of his scrutiny.

Sarah gave him a look just to one side of total exasperation.

"Yes, you certainly would," Jareth sighed, sounding a bit chagrined. He turned away from her, but she caught his muttering.

"More courage than brains..." He shook his head, ignoring the stormy look Sarah tossed his way. "It's possible..."

"Then you'll try?" Sarah asked.

Jareth was silent for a moment. "Do you know what they'll do to you?" he asked softly.

"I'm asking for your help, Goblin King," Sarah said stoutly. "Do we have a bargain or not?"

He didn't correct her on her use of his title. He didn't exactly look happy either.

"...Yes," Jareth said finally. He darted forward and grabbed her hand, quick as a snake. "You'll regret this," he told her.

"We'll see," Sarah said. Jareth got a strange, rather unnerving look in his eye.

"Sooner than you think..." he said with something uncomfortably close to pity in his voice. He released her hand and leaned back. "You'll have to remove your clothes."

Sarah stared at him.

"Ha, ha," she said warily.

"I'm not _joking_, Sarah," he said, somehow making the word sound vaguely obscene. "If you want me to change how you look, I have to see what I'm working with."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. "That actually," she said slowly, "kind of makes sense."

Jareth smiled.

"Which makes me suspicious," Sarah muttered. Jareth's smile broadened alarmingly. "I am not getting naked in front of you," Sarah said, her stomach jumping like it was trying to get free and run howling from the room.

Jareth leaned on the counter with a kind of concentrated sensuality that made her think of a perfume commercial. 'Liquid Sex', by Chanel.

"It's a reasonable request," he said in a very reasonable tone of voice. "The more I see of you the easier this will be."

Sarah wasn't buying.

"For you, maybe," she said, bemused and somewhat admiring of his tenacity.

"Fine," Jareth said flatly. The change in his tone of voice drew her attention like a gunshot. "Take off as much clothing as you can bear to remove in my presence, then." He turned and walked away from her, lightly cradling his injured arm, as if some new hurt had reminded him of the older one.

Sarah gaped after him, realizing that somehow he'd managed to do it again.

It was beginning to become a pattern. Jareth would do something unreasonable and nearly impossible to accept, and Sarah would end up feeling like she ought to apologize for having a perfectly sane and understandable reaction to it.

It...

Well, it wasn't fair.

Sarah sighed deeply, and started to squirm out of her shirt.

"All right," she muttered, her cheeks hot. She glanced up. "This had better not be a-"

Jareth turned to look at her, and Sarah stopped, shocked. She was hurting him, standing there topless. He could barely stand the sight of her, and it wasn't because he hated her. It was because he-

Jareth tore his eyes away, and Sarah realized she was covering her mouth with both of her hands, like a little girl.

"Can you do this?" she asked in a very small voice. He kept his back to her as he answered.

"I'll need more light," he replied casually, as if there was nothing wrong and she hadn't seen anything at all.

"There should be more candles in the bathroom," Sarah said calmly, playing along. She watched him silently turn and walk down her hall to get them. She stared at his retreating back, chewing nervously on her thumbnail, and wondered just what it was that she'd ever done to inspire that kind of painfully intense devotion.

Maybe...maybe that's just the way his kind of people were about things like that. She certainly couldn't recall any fairy stories about the magical wizard-king and the girl he only sort-of liked.

There was a particularity sharp thud from outside. Sarah frowned for a moment at the offending door. She didn't know how long this was going to take. Better to be prepared ahead of time. Sarah walked over to the table where she hid her old Queen tapes, crouched down, and retrieved a very heavy, very ornate ring of keys. The keys on the ring were of a variety of sizes and shapes. Some were hot, some were cold, and at least one was almost entirely invisible. Sarah set the keys on the tabletop. Then she put her hip against the wood and nudged the item of furniture along the wall.

Hidden behind it, set into the drywall was the faint outline of a door, about three feet tall. It was not immediately apparent whether it was a drawing or...something else. Sarah stepped back, hands on hips, satisfied. Then she glanced down at her jeans, and sighed.

She swallowed hard, unzipped them and kicked them off before she lost her nerve. That was just about as far as she could go. Sarah wasn't entirely above a little vanity and gave herself a quick once-over. Her panties and bra didn't match, but then she hadn't thought she was dressing for an audience. At least she wasn't wearing her Wonder Woman underoos.

Jareth looked up at her once as he was walking back. He froze mid-stride for just an instant, and then continued walking as if he was entirely unaffected by her. Sarah folded her arms across her chest, more for his sake than hers. She didn't like this...she didn't like being the cause of so much misery. Jareth busied himself lighting candles, barely glancing at the revealed door. After a few mintues he gestured her forward without looking at her.

Sarah inched forward with a definite lack of enthusiasm. When Jareth finally met her eyes and registered her expression he softened considerably.

"I won't hurt _you_," he soothed. The way he said it left no doubt that he was perfectly willing to hurt other people. "I won't ever hurt you." His voice was gentle and sweet, but that made it more disturbing, not less.

"Not me I'm worried about..." Sarah muttered unhappily. Of course, if those things outside did kill her, and Jareth did get his power back, they would probably live to regret it. "What do you need me to do?" she asked, louder.

Jareth eyed her, and she wondered if he'd caught her first sentence.

"Stand here," he said, and she obliged, moving closer to the light. She tensed as he moved way, way inside her personal space. Sarah caught a whiff of that scent again, and straightened to attention like she'd heard someone call her name.

Burning leaves and cherry lollipops and warm silk. Everything good, everything she'd ever wanted...It was overwhelming.

She felt a feathery brush across the bare skin of her shoulder and turned her head sharply to look. Jareth's face was right there, and she started. A pale strand of his hair had fallen forward and was resting lightly against her collarbone. It was the only part of him that was actually touching her.

He wasn't looking at her face, and ignored her reaction, frowning faintly in concentration. He was examining her skin as if it was a particularly difficult math problem. She watched him bring his hand up and run it down her arm without touching her, keeping a bare half inch of space between his skin and hers. She was startled to see that everywhere he nearly touched her, he left her skin sparkling faintly. As if he left a dusting of glitter behind him as he went.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked, surprised to find that her voice was hushed, as if she was in church. She brushed at the glitter on her arm, and it came off on her hand.

"Learning you," he said softly, his voice intimate and close. Sarah broke out in goosebumps, and hoped he wouldn't notice. His fingers trailed lightly down her spine and she bit her lip, admitting to herself that she might have some trouble with this. When his hand curled over her hip and brushed gently over her belly, she had to clench her fists.

For a moment, he let his hand rest there, warm against her skin. At her back, she heard him take a deep breath. Then he was in motion again, his fingers skimming over her skin without really touching. He explored every inch of her left exposed, even lifting the weight of her hair to one side so he could brush his hand over the nape of her neck. He crouched down and tugged at her ankles so he could inspect the soles of her feet, turned her arms at the wrists so he could carefully look over the palms of her hands.

Sarah had no idea if any of this was necessary, but it sure as hell was an effective aphrodisiac.

Then he walked around her to get at her face and she froze, her libido howling in want. He looked obscenely beautiful in the soft light, serious and focused with concentration. When his hand came up to brush lightly over her cheek she shut her eyes. She felt his thumb going over her eyelid, tickling her eyelashes.

It felt like her heart was trying to struggle out of her chest. It felt awful. She was so turned on that she was almost angry. If Jareth didn't stop soon, she wasn't going to be responsible for what happened.

As if he heard her, Jareth's hand fell away.

She opened her eyes, and realized that she wasn't the only one breathing hard and feeling flustered. His eyes were huge and black with hunger. He looked half-wild, like he wasn't doing a very good job of behaving himself and no longer cared. Sarah suddenly wondered just how much examination he'd actually needed to do, and how much he'd lingered over just because he couldn't help himself.

"You enjoyed that." Sarah had meant it to be an accusation. She probably ought to sound outraged. The best she could manage was a bit breathy.

"Yes," Jareth hissed. He was clenching and unclenching his hands, as if he wanted nothing better than to grab her, throw her on the floor and have her right there.

Sarah was not a saint. She looked down.

Oh yes, Jareth had definitely been enjoying himself.

"Can you..." Sarah's eyes flicked up to his mouth, and she nearly lost her train of thought for a minute. "Can you make the illusion? Will it work?"

Jareth was watching her mouth as well. He started drifting closer as if he fully intended to get another taste of her.

"It should," he said roughly. He hesitated and lifted his eyes, looking surprised. "I don't want it to," he said honestly, a flash of annoyance mixing with a flicker of fear. "I want you safe." As if he couldn't believe that he could be so foolishly sentimental, and knew he could do nothing to stop himself. "It's too dangerous."

"It'll save my friends, I know it will." She looked up at him fiercely. "This will work, Jareth."

_I'm going to save you._

Jareth was still drifting closer to her, as if she was drawing him in with her own personal gravity.

"How much time do we have?" Sarah asked faintly.

"Twenty minutes," Jareth replied without hesitation, as if he had a clock in his head. Who knew, maybe he did.

I'm going to die in twenty minutes, Sarah thought with a chill. She looked up into his dark eyes and thought for a moment about how massively unfair the whole situation was to both of them.

Didn't she deserve...didn't they both deserve...

Sarah pushed up on her toes, and kissed him.

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Solea-"That dweam, wiffin a dweam..."_

_- oh, you think you'll get away with that, do you? I WILL collect those cookies, don't think I won't._

_CoffeeKris- through the strength of her love for this story, CoffeeKris can move faster than a speeding bullet, she's more powerful than a locomotive...can write fluffy J/S while leaping a tall building in a single bound...  
_

_Sonika- er...I gotta say, that's some level of Jareth love you got there._

_(Tiny Jareth looking vaguely disturbed)_

_JewelValentine- yes, he does, doesn't he? (Giving Shirtless Tiny Jareth a peck on the cheek)_

_Unfortunately, he's a bit fickle... I've caught him at least once over at Lixxle's, and I swear he's snuck out over to Natsuko37's at least twice...(shooting Tiny Jareth a dirty look)_

_(Tiny Jareth entirely fails to look innocent)_


	7. Chapter 7SMUT ALERT

Sanctuary

ch 7

Jareth let slip a soft sound that told her everything there was to know about just how very badly he wanted her. Then, as if he'd only needed to hear the truth of it in his own voice, he snatched her close. He lifted her right off her feet in furious delight, holding her tightly as he took charge of the kiss. Sarah parted her lips under the onslaught, her arms going up around his neck. The sweet taste of him exploded in her mouth, shorting out basic neural functions. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think.

Sarah could almost feel her I.Q. dropping. It was that good.

He was kissing her in slow motion, deep, desperate, lingering caresses. She felt like she was melting. Sarah tangled her fingers in his feather-soft hair, deafened by a rising roar of lust, and relief, and some deeper emotion she couldn't name. It coiled delightfully in her stomach, glowing warm with unnatural heat.

God, the way he tasted...it was like some forbidden drug. Too wonderful. Sarah licked at his mouth as if she would never get enough. Jareth leaned into her, forcing her back into an arch, deepening the kiss until Sarah thought she just might faint dead away. She realized suddenly that she was making noise. Soft little desperate sounds, swallowed by his mouth. Sarah broke off, gasping for air, and barely stopped herself from whimpering at the loss.

She had to get a hold of herself, Sarah thought as the room got a bit fuzzy. She blinked her eyes and shook her head a little, breathing hard. No swooning over deposed, magical, sexy kings.

Jareth groaned softly and recaptured her mouth, as if he couldn't stand not to be kissing her. Her tongue was still tingling from the first kiss, still echoing with the sweet taste of her heart's deepest desires. So it was a shock how much of a relief the second kiss was. It was as if having already had it, she'd become more sensitive, not less. The affect was utterly devastating. She'd never want anything else, Sarah thought with a thrill of awe and terror. She'd never drink or eat anything ever again...after all, what flavor could possibly compare to this? Even worse- how could she ever stand to go without it? Sarah would end up like a mouse in an addiction experiment, refusing to hit the button for food so she could keep hitting the lever for one more fix.

Then Jareth moaned into her mouth. He made a noise like she was hurting him. Like he was ravenous, and terrified, and exhilarated all at once. He stated to shake a little.

Jareth sounded like Sarah felt. Sarah wondered for the first time what _she_ tasted like to him.

The liquid heat that had curled so deliciously in her stomach migrated higher, and started to ache. Sarah pulled back a little, lifting her eyes to look up at him as she brushed her lips lightly over his mouth. He breathed out softly, the warmth spreading over her face. He looked dangerously carnal. Sarah was so close to him she was sharing the air in his lungs, but it still wasn't close enough. She felt her heart contract in her chest. The feeling was damn near unbearable. God, she _ached..._and when she met his eyes, she saw a similar desperation there.

Jareth took a step and pushed her up against the back of her couch. His hands caught under her thighs and he lifted her up, pressing forward as her legs parted. His head dipped, his mouth moving wetly down along the delicate skin on the side of her neck. He was messy and desperate about it, and Sarah moaned gratefully, sharing his impatience.

She slipped her hands up under his arms, drawing her nails firmly down the length of his back.

"Ah, yes," Jareth hissed, shivering once all over as if she'd done something unspeakably wonderful. Encouraged, Sarah pressed herself against him, bracing herself with one hand on the back of the couch so she wouldn't fall over. A firm, warm part of him slid snugly up against her inner thigh, making her stomach flutter. Sarah tugged her arm tightly around his waist to hold him there. Jareth growled softly, and bit her, just where her neck met her shoulder. He applied his teeth carefully, worrying at her skin as if he found her delicious.

Sarah tilted her head and pressed her face into pale, feather soft hair until she found the ear she was looking for, and started to nibble. Jareth sighed against her skin, leaning into her, very obviously enjoying what she was doing to him. Sarah licked him, enjoying herself. He hissed in a breath and lifted his head to trail the tip of his tongue delicately along the edge of her earlobe. It sent a shock down that entire side of her body, making her jerk and gasp against him. Jareth's erection shifted as she moved, and it came to rest at a very sensitive spot. Sarah had a brief instant of shocked appreciation at how undeniably right it felt to have him there. Jareth stiffened, his eyes fluttering shut.

Then he thrust against her, hard.

Sarah was tugging at the fastenings to his lovely pants with total, mindless want. While she was distracted, Jareth hooked his thumbs underneath her bra straps and tugged them down her arms. Sarah decided that was all right too, and helped him, squirming out of the stretchy material. The leather of his gloves was warm on her skin as he cupped her, his fingers trailing lightly over her nipples. He bowed his head, his mouth brushing over her collarbone, then moving lower. His hands slid down to rest on her hips as he licked at her breast.

Sarah arched her back slightly without thinking.

"Mmm," Jareth said against her skin, sounding pleased. He sucked at her nipple, teased it gently with his teeth. Sarah clutched at his shoulders. He turned his head and gave her other breast the same treatment, firming his mouth against her skin, sucking and nipping at her.

Then, to her surprise, he broke away, moving down her body. His breath was warm at her navel. She jumped slightly when he kissed her inner thigh, and she looked down at him with her mouth open.

Very matter-of-factly, Jareth got a finger underneath the edge of her cotton underwear and moved it aside. Just enough to make room for his mouth. His tongue slipped inside her. A hot, wet flick of sensation that drew a strangled sound from her throat. He froze, tensing for a second, before tasting her again with a soft, almost frightened sound of appreciation. Sarah hissed in a breath. Encouraged, Jareth began to lick her in earnest.

Sarah choked and clawed at the sofa fabric.

So good...

Jareth was tasting her with a desperate single mindedness that had her shaking and sticky with sweat in a ridiculously small amount of time. He was making noises, a grown man who'd never tasted sugar before savouring his first piece of candy. She shifted restlessly, trying to give him better access. He moaned softly against her in gratitude and the vibration made her sputter in shocked delight. He sounded raw with desire and pleasure and not a little bit of fear.

Once again, a flash of thought darted through. A mouse in a cage, ignoring food to endlessly strive for one more hit.

Anything else she might have thought was brought to a screeching halt by a splinteringly forceful blow to her front door. The sound was so loud that for a terrified second she thought the door had broken, and she almost fell on the floor turning to look.

Somehow, Jareth managed to pull back and catch her around the waist before she even thought of catching herself. For a moment they both looked at the unbroken door in wide-eyed silence. The pounding resumed, much quieter, as if the beast had temporarily exhausted itself.

Sarah looked down and met Jareth's eyes. For a split second they stared at each other in complete understanding.

Any second this could end. This could end, and they never would get to what they both wanted.

Sarah scrambled over the back of the couch as Jareth shot to his feet. She bounced back onto the cushions, kicking out of her underwear as Jareth franticly peeled himself out of his boots, shoving his pants down with savage impatience.

He crawled onto the sofa, bowing his head and pressing his lips to her skin as if he couldn't bear the few moments they'd been apart. He moved up her body with small, warm touches. Mouth, hands, breath. Each one sent a sweet, sharp shock up her spine. It was happening fast, too fast to hold on to the sensations, the things he was doing to her. Then he was above her, and his erection touched her just...there.

Sarah hissed in a breath as everything came crashing in on her all at once. She gasped and lifted her hips, the motion pushing them together. As easily as taking a breath, he was just barely inside of her. Jareth made a harsh sound. Sarah had just enough time to realize that she was lucky it was happening this way, without time to think, because if she had a minute to dwell on the way it felt it might just give her a heart attack.

Then Jareth pressed against her, and her brain whited out. Sarah clutched at him with a high, desperate exclamation. She gripped at his shoulders, his back, hands roaming over his skin with something near to disbelief. This was Jareth here. This was Jareth inside her...His next thrust was much harder and she cried out in thoughtless reaction. He stopped, sagging a little, bowing his head. Sarah was half-mad with want and she pulled at him with arms and legs, pressing close, urging him on.

More, yes, _more of that..._

"Sarah," he choked, sounding shocked and raw. His eyes were wide with something huge and strangely fragile. He was so close to her face she could count every eyelash. "You..."

Sarah gritted her teeth, almost crying she wanted him so much, needed him so much... She hitched her legs up around his waist, lifting herself, and they were suddenly...So much closer. Terribly close. _No talking now._

Jareth let slip a sound that was suspiciously close to a whimper. The angle was frighteningly better. He moved inside her, not hard, just moved...

Sarah let her head drop back onto the cushion, shutting her eyes. Again, harder, and...

"Please, " Sarah whispered desperately. Jareth kissed the word out of her mouth as he moved within her. She kept saying it, and he kept taking it from her, drinking it out of her.

"Yes," he gasped against her lips.

Sarah would never think of wine or cherry lollipops or summer evenings ever again. When she dreamed, it would be of this...

Please don't stop. Please, just there, please more...

"Yes," into her lips, as he pressed against her smoothly, fitting himself to her so tightly it was as if he was made to be there. As if he knew exactly what she needed from him...

_What are you doing?_

_What you wanted. As ever._

Jareth was making little strangled gasping noises as they came together. The sound seemed to burrow down underneath Sarah's skin, making her tingle and spark. This was too good to last, and Jareth's reaction just made it even harder to hold back. The world narrowed to the place where they met. Sarah trembled against him as he thrust into her, squeezing her eyes shut as her body roared in delight. She went very quiet, knowing what was coming...oh, god...

Sarah wailed once in joy and terror as she came, her body tensing so forcefully she nearly lifted herself completely off the couch. She grabbed onto him tightly, clutching him close as her body sang. Above her, Jareth groaned in anticipation and relief, sounding almost entirely unhinged. He pushed into her again, spiking her fading orgasm wonderfully. He choked and gasped above her, stiffening against her in frozen ecstasy.

It was, she decided, a startlingly lovely sound. She was suddenly quite certain that particular sound would never entirely leave her thoughts again.

He lay heavy against her for a moment, panting. Sarah relaxed into the cushions of the couch, determined to enjoy the afterglow, no matter what might be after them. Jareth pressed his lips to her shoulder and lifted himself up a little.

His face, when it came into her view, was luminous. She smiled automatically in response. It was impossible not to. Sarah had never seen him look that way. She'd never seen anyone look that way, honestly.

"Hello," she said warmly.

Jareth laughed out loud and kissed her soundly. It was, as always, a dangerous thing to do, and what had no doubt meant to be a brief peck turned into something quite different. Jareth made a soft, appreciative sound against her mouth as Sarah deepened the kiss, reaching up to cup his face as she sipped greedily at her wildest dreams.

When Jareth pulled back they were both flushed and gasping.

"Have to watch that," Sarah panted. Jareth grinned, his eyes flashing. "What?" she prompted. She'd never seen him so giddy before. He reached up and brushed her hair back from her face.

"Tell me now," he said with a smile that was not human at all, "That I have no power over you." He lifted his eyebrows. "Say it and mean it, Sarah."

Sarah opened her mouth. She paused, startled.

Jareth laughed. It was not a giddy sound. It was more like something that would frighten small children. He pushed himself up on his knees and looked down at her as if she was some kind of magnificent feast made just for him. He lifted her hand, and kissed it.

"Well done," he said.

Sarah narrowed her eyes, and pushed herself up onto one elbow. She could see Jareth very clearly. Could see the triumph in his eyes, the crooked twist to his lips. He was damn near glowing, and not because he'd just had spectacular sex. He was _actually_ glittering, as if a dusting of whatever-it-was that he had deposited on her while he was learning her shape had taken residence underneath his skin. His hair shone golden in the light coming off her horseshoe wards.

Jareth looked powerful.

An idea stepped fully formed into her mind, leaving her sputtering.

_'I fought and I lied, I charmed and I threatened...' _

"Did you...plan this?" Sarah hissed, a blossom of mortification opening in her chest. "Was this..." she sputtered, shoving herself upright, "all this...everything you said...you..."

"There was no way to know-" Jareth began, tilting his head, admiring her as if she was his, as if he owned her now.

"Get off me!" Sarah snapped, shoving him, squirming away from him. She scrambled to her feet, fumbling for her clothes. "I don't believe...I can't believe-god, what an idiot I am!" she hissed to herself. Jareth watched her, stepping back, looking startled and amused.

"The whole time," Sarah sputtered, hopping on one foot to tug her jeans on. She gave Jareth a murderous look. "The whole time, you were just trying to-" She gritted her teeth, thinking about how _fragile_ he'd made himself seem, so freaking in love with her..."And I _let_ you." Sarah tried very hard not to think about how desperately amazing it had been, to let him.

"No," Jareth said, and nearly laughed. "I should have been, though." There was something in his voice that made her think that he was finding the memory as distracting as she was.

The pounding coming from her front door was very loud and alarming-sounding. Jareth was between Sarah and the secret opening in the wall. She felt justified, then, in trying to knock him down. He was too quick for her, though, and danced out of the way.

"Get away from me," Sarah growled, focusing on her outrage so she wouldn't think about hurt feelings, or tangled-up truths, or the way Jareth was looking at her. Maybe he hadn't intended to use her. Maybe he was telling the truth now, or maybe he was telling her the truth two truths ago. The only thing Sarah could really focus on was that she wanted to get away from him. She wanted distance, so she could think. If he had his power back, then he damn well didn't need her help anymore...Sarah snatched up the ring of keys, blinking rapidly. Not the cold one, or the one that made her think of flowers, no...

She paused on an ornate little key that from some angles was almost entirely invisible. _Yes_. Without fanfare, Sarah jammed it at the suggestion of a door in her wall, and the faint outline of a keyhole became an actual one. Sarah turned it in the lock with a click and threw a glance over her shoulder.

"I hope they do get you," she said hatefully, wishing she could mean it.

Jareth lost his good humor, and stared at her with a sober expression.

"Do you?" He searched her face. "All you have to do to ensure that is leave me here." He said, startling her. He opened his hands, quietly drawing her attention to the apartment around them.

Her front door cracked with a sharp report of breaking wood. The ward above it finally set her wall alight, the fire licking at the paint. Something pushed at the broken wood from the other side, and a piece of her door fell to the floor with a hollow sound.

Sarah looked over at Jareth. He was watching her quietly.

Sarah let out a breath of frustration, and opened the small door in her wall. A cool wind whipped through it into her apartment, bringing a sense of wide open spaces and growing things. She moved to go through it, to leave him and stopped, her heart contracting unpleasantly in her chest. She'd been wrong about him before...

"Damn," she breathed, and bowed her head for a moment. She took a deep breath. "Come on then," she said through her teeth, refusing to look at him. She ducked down, moving to step through.

God, she was stupid.

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_Author's note:_

_Thanks to Lixxle and PhurieDae, without whom I would be too ashamed to continue this. *hangs head* To all those who wondered, pleaded, and begged for me to continue this... I have no excuse. I am lame. The next Ch should be up shortly._


	8. Chapter 8

Sanctuary

Ch 8

By: Jack Hawksmoor

Sarah landed on her feet with some force, stumbling forward into the grass to keep from falling over. She straightened, lifting her head to look up at the mountain, and someone crashed into her from behind. He seized her by the waist and pulled her in close. He was still very naked.

Sarah made an outraged sound and squirmed for all she was worth.

"Stop it!" she snapped, annoyed. Jareth released her and stepped back a bit, as if he was expecting her to whirl and attempt to slap him. Sarah declined, feeling like she'd lived down to his expectations enough for one night. She glared at him instead.

Jareth gave her an impatient look, as if he was a teacher, and she a particularity thick student of his.

"Sarah," he said in a scolding, stop-being-stupid voice. "Don't you see? You've just proved me right again."

Sarah spread her hands. "What? That I'm a sucker for-"

"You care." He flashed her an infuriating, self assured smile. "About me."

"Look," Sarah said in a dangerous tone of voice, stepping toward him with the possibility of real violence on her mind.

"You had to care, Sarah, for the undoing to work. If you hadn't cared, just sleeping with you wouldn't have changed anything," Jareth said, his voice soft. "And how could I have predicted that?" He reached out and touched a lock of her hair, as someone else might reach out to touch hands. Sarah let him, surprised and once again reviewing her own assumptions.

"I don't understand," she said quietly. "If you...if you didn't know..."

"I didn't try to make you care, because I didn't think it would work even if you did." He lifted his eyebrows. "If I had known, I would have tried as soon as I got through the door." He tilted his head as he looked down at her. It was bizarre how confident and relaxed he could be while not wearing anything. "I would have had you eating out of my hands. You would have recited poetry, composed ballads...I can be _very_ seductive." His voice went dark and shivery at the end, and Sarah had to fight the impulse to glance down at his lack of clothing. She opened her mouth and stared at his face for a moment instead, her brain going over the words he'd just said with growing disbelief.

"You are not a nice person, you know that?" Sarah said frankly, shaking her head a little at the sheer unapologetic audacity of the man. With a prick of dismay she recognized that she found amoral frankness weirdly attractive. Sarah would be so much more comfortable with the fact that she liked him if he was nicer.

Jareth smiled at her unpleasantly.

Poetry. Right.

Sarah looked away from him with a confusing mix of amusement, relief, and dismay. He hadn't used her but given the knowledge and opportunity, he would have. Not exactly comforting. Even though...

Sarah flashed, briefly, on the expression on Jareth's face when she'd first removed her shirt. Whatever else he might have lied about, that had been real. Pursing her lips, she glanced over at him tentatively. He was looking up at the mountain.

They were standing on one of the grassy, flower-specked foothills that rolled right up to an impressive, looming, snow-topped mountain. The smaller peaks of the mountain range clustered close by, younger siblings hovering close to their older brother. Behind Sarah was a small, uninhabited valley that was so mindlessly pretty it could have been on a label of Swiss chocolates.

"You can't do that again," Sarah said quietly, almost to herself. Jareth turned from the scenery to look at her.

"What?"

"You can't lie to me to make a point," Sarah said, louder that time, nodding to herself.

"And why not?" Jareth asked, amused.

"Because that's not what you do!" Sarah sputtered, giving him a sharp look.

Jareth blinked, and then examined her closely, as if he'd spotted something unusual growing on her face. "Not what you do," he repeated, as if rolling the words around in his mouth, to see if he liked the taste. "When?" he asked then, an intensity in his voice Sarah couldn't miss.

Sarah examined her fingernails. She was a little unsure herself of where the end of that sentence was leading. That's not what you do...when you like somebody...when you're with somebody? She was saved from having to answer by a loud rumbling from above.

The sound was very out of place in the postcard-perfect place they were in, and Sarah lifted her eyes with a frown. The sky behind the mountain was ruining the scenery. It was cloudy and ominous-looking and getting darker even as Sarah looked up at it.

"I've never seen it storm here," she said, ignoring the expression of frustration on Jareth's face. The valley was a station on a lot of routes through strange places. There were supposed to be protections on it. Another rumble of thunder came from behind the mountain, rolling down the hills to echo through the valley in a disturbing way. "I suppose...it's been so long since I've been around-"

"That's not a storm," Jareth said, sounding a bit put out at the abrupt change of subject. Sarah looked at him with a question on her face. "I told you they would follow," he added, taking a step and folding his arms.

Sarah did not miss the fact that he had just placed himself between the not-storm and her. The darkness was moving alarmingly quickly across the sky. As Sarah watched, a white flicker of lightning struck the mountaintop in front of them.

Sarah stared to count and got to three before a crack of thunder made her wince.

"But you can stop them now," Sarah said tentatively, stepping up beside him. "Can't you?"

Jareth lifted his head, looking powerful and strange and very inhuman. There was another flash of lightning, and Sarah didn't even get to one before the thunder. Her heart sank a little. So fast...

"Oh, yes," he said, his voice promising terrible retribution. Then, quieter, in a much more terrible tone of voice..."Yes, we are in trouble, aren't we?"

Sarah glanced over in surprise and got a chill, suddenly quite sure he wasn't talking to her. There was a dark, shark-like smile on his face. His teeth were very sharp, and they seemed larger in his mouth than she remembered them. She looked up at the mountain, and felt an unexpected flicker of pity for whatever was headed their way.

The Goblin King was pissed.

Given what had happened, Sarah could only think that they'd earned whatever they were about to receive. Then he turned to her, and the disparity between Scary Goblin King and tense, concerned-looking Jareth was hard to miss. He took her by the shoulders and leaned close.

"You have to shut your eyes for this, Sarah," he said, as the sky darkened over their heads. Sarah was sure she could hear something whispering on the wind, and bit her lip. Jareth squeezed her shoulders. "Shut your eyes, and don't open them, no matter what you hear." He reached up and touched her cheek. "I'll keep you safe," he murmured, and it almost sounded like an oath.

Jareth was afraid, but not for himself. Sarah looked up at the determination on his face and almost kissed him. She remembered just in time what a distracting experience it could be. Sarah thought, by the way his eyes widened, that he'd seen something of the impulse in her expression. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She felt his thumb brush lightly over her eyelid and shivered once, head to toe, remembering.

The sound of the wind went from whispering to something more like snarling, and Sarah was left standing alone with her own thoughts. She gritted her teeth, flinching as something solid and covered in hair brushed by her. Then, with a yowl, it was gone. The noise...she had nothing to compare it to. Like a fight between hundreds of cats and a demon, maybe. Screaming and howling and gibbering. Something was laughing and the sound was so horrible she slapped her hands over her ears, terrified it would burrow into her brain and tear her sanity out.

It didn't really help, though, it couldn't...and then it got worse. It was madness all around her. Looking-glass monsters spewing insanity all over the hillside like blood from countless wounds.

Something grabbed at her arm with an appendage that wasn't even close to a hand and Sarah cried out once, trying to jerk away without falling. An outraged roar made her wince and she felt the thing grasping her arm start to flake away. It didn't release her, but almost seemed to disintegrate on the spot.

Things started wailing in disbelief and terror, some in voices that might almost have been human. Begging and sobbing...and that laugh...it made Sarah want to tear her ears off.

Then, little hissing clicking voices, she could almost make out...

_please_, and _sorry, so sorry..._

Cockroach voices, claws that catch scratching words out on the ground through a puddle of blood and entrails.

Sarah turned her head and retched. She went down on one knee, almost grateful for the physical sensation, distracting her from what she was hearing. Jareth had warned her not to look. Sarah wouldn't have opened her eyes for all the fairy dust in Neverland.

Then, it got quiet.

Sarah waited, straining to listen, wondering if she should try to run. Knowing that if she needed to it was hopeless anyway. The wind had stilled. There was only her own breathing, and something else, faintly...a wet sound. Sarah frowned, concentrating. Almost like...eating.

She went abruptly and utterly cold.

"Jareth?" she called, clenching her fists. For a long, heart-wrenching moment there was nothing.

"All right," Jareth said roughly, sounding not quite himself. Sarah sagged in relief and opened her eyes, grinning. She realized, afterward, that Jareth had probably meant 'all right' in the sense that he was okay and uneaten, as opposed to 'all right' in the sense of 'all clear to look'.

Jareth was kneeling beside a pile of leaves. Sarah's mind told her, after a moment, that it was definitely a pile of leaves. Strange, charcoal-gray oak leaves, sparking with that otherworldly glitter that Sarah had seen so liberally covering every surface of the labyrinth. The wind whipped through and rustled the pile, a few individual leaves taking to the air, sparkling in the sunlight. Sarah saw that, her brain accepted that. But for just an instant, as she'd opened her eyes, it had been something else. A body. A creature corpse right out of nightmare. Jabberwocky horror. Then Jareth turned to look at her with glitter all around his mouth, (blood, Sarah wasn't thinking blood...) and it was just leaves. He was unrecognizable to her, for just that one moment. Some wild, powerful, ancient _thing, _at least at terrible as the beast he was feasting on...

Oak leaves were scattered all over the hillside, dark and shining and dancing in the wind. Sarah was kneeling in them.

Jareth wiped his mouth clean, looking if not entirely human, at least not so frightening. He was wearing clothes again, conjured out of thin air. He was dressed as he had been the first time she'd set eyes on him, in fact, and Sarah couldn't help but think the choice was deliberate. Reminding her of simpler times? Sarah stared at him in barely concealed horror. She wasn't thinking about the blood on his face. Or the stuff stuck in his teeth that was more solid than blood.

It was just glitter, blowing away in the breeze.

Jareth saw the look on her face and blanched. "I told you," he said, his voice deliberately casual, "not to look."

Sarah nodded, too fast.

"Lucky," she said faintly, still just slightly hysterical. "I might've been cursed or something."

Jareth stared at her, and said nothing. Sarah got a chill. She _thought_ she'd been lucky...

"Am I going to turn to stone?" she asked. It could've been a joke. It wasn't. Sarah's voice was deadly serious.

Jareth pushed on his knees and levered himself upright. He looked grim. "You could have gone home, back to your life. Put stranger things behind you." he said, extending a hand to help her up.

Sarah looked at his hand, then back up. "Not likely," she said deliberately.

Jareth eyed her. " No?"

Sarah smiled slightly. "Well, for one thing, you destroyed my apartment."

Jareth gave her an amused, slightly superior look. "You won't turn to stone," he said, almost gently.

"No matter what?" Sarah asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Jareth stared at her for a moment, then lifted one of her hands and kissed the inside of her wrist. "No matter what," he said in a strange, deliberate tone of voice. Sarah believed him, suddenly and whole cloth. She had a creepy suspicion, looking into his eyes, that he was being entirely truthful with her. One of those fairy-tale oaths that lasted far longer than they ought to. Should she live five more years or five thousand, no matter how long any piece of her remained on earth, she would never turn to stone.

Sarah almost laughed, it was so ridiculous.

"I'll hold you to that," she said, in a flash of insanity suddenly feeling warm and fond of him. A monster, maybe, but her monster. "What now? Can you go back home? Fix things?"

Jareth looked away from her, stepping back. He was quiet for a moment.

"I could say," he began slowly, "That I have no intention to. You did not stay behind in your apartment, your end of the bargain wasn't kept, so why should mine?" He examined the hillside as if it was fascinating, watching the oak leaves blow about, glittering attractively in the wind. Sarah stared at him, mouth open. "I think then you would be outraged," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "You might even try to force me to fulfill my promise."

He folded his arms across his chest and looked down.

"I could then be certain you would come back with me. You would demand it, so I would not try to trick you again." He kicked aimlessly at the pile of leaves at his feet, rather like a slightly petulant child.

"Why don't you, then?" Sarah asked him hoarsely, her throat suddenly very dry.

"Apparently," Jareth said softly, "It isn't done." He poked at the leaves with his boot as if they were fascinating.

Sarah stopped breathing for a moment, convinced she couldn't have heard that. Then, feeling rather lightheaded, she took a step toward him and put her hand on his chest. He was wearing that dark armor, and it was cold under her fingers. She cupped his cheek with her other hand, pushed up on her toes, and kissed him.

Jareth tasted of sex, and, as his lips parted, the flavor grew more intense, sharpening until to her own surprise, he tasted of _himself_...

Sarah broke away, breathing hard. The glitter that had been left on his face had smeared on hers, and she was mildly surprised at how little she cared.

Jareth had snaked his arms tight around her waist, and when she pulled back he made no move to release her. His eyes were very bright, but his face was serious.

"Until now, you've been living along the edge," he said quietly, his face very close to hers. "You've been moving through the margins, and the things you've seen haven't noticed you passing by." His eyes were deadly serious.

"Sometimes seeing the truth comes with a price," he said, drawing back a little, lifting his hands to grip her by the shoulders. "You're going to get noticed now." He enunciated every word precisely, pausing to stress each one. The effect got her attention as thoroughly as if he'd shouted in her face. He couldn't have made it clearer that she had desperate need of this information. His voice seemed to promise dire things on the way.

Sarah pressed her lips together in a thin line and nodded once, understanding pretty clearly what he was trying to tell her. Regular people were pretty safe from ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. She hadn't been regular people since she was fifteen, but she wasn't any kind of target, either. The world was filled with stories of young girls who triumphed over the big bad. There were quite a few involving young women helping magical things triumph over the big bad. The endings usually involved some kind of happily ever after.

But the stories about the young girl who saw something she shouldn't rarely ended so sweetly.

"And I suppose you can't help me," Sarah said, guessing where this particular tale was headed. Jareth looked briefly surprised.

"You want my help?" he asked, and a smile briefly flickered to his lips. His tone of voice indicated that his kind of help was rarely asked for. Sarah tilted her head to the side, thinking.

"What happens if I say yes?" she asked frankly. It hardly ever hurt to ask. Sometimes people (or things) just told you, and saved you no end of trouble...

She felt his hand move on the small of her back, his fingers spreading out. He dipped his head, and when he lifted it again, he looked pleased as punch. Like a small boy just offered a sucker the size of his head.

"If you..." he began, and stopped and had to clear his throat before continuing.

Sarah's eyes widened. His voice was shaking in the way of someone barely holding back a shout of triumph.

"If you say yes," he said, "You'll have to come with me," his voice went soft on the last, his eyes greedy and bright. He pulled a crystal from nowhere, held it up and sent it to spinning with graceful absentmindedness. It was a beautiful sight, and difficult to ignore, but if he meant it as a distraction, he failed miserably.

Sarah raised an eyebrow and regarded him with some justified exasperation. She looked from his face to the crystal in front of her, and chewed thoughtfully on her lip. She could see nothing inside the crystal, only darkness.

"You could just ask me, you know," Sarah said quietly.

"Come with me," Jareth replied quickly. Sarah smothered a smile. That was about as close as she could hope to get. Silently, she nodded.

Jareth's eyes flashed in delight, and he released the crystal into the air. He opened his hand and it floated up into the air above them, brightening as it went. The crystal flashed blindingly over their heads. Sarah blinked, then finally had to shut her eyes, flinching away from the light.

Jareth stepped back, and it was as if he'd dropped her into a hole, it got dark so fast. Every ounce of light was extinguished. Sarah opened her eyes and it was as if she hadn't. She saw nothing, nothing at all. It was so dark it felt like she had a sack over her head, and she grabbed Jareth's arms tightly, the cloth of his shirt bunching under her fingers.

Then, faintly, from above, a pale bluish glow. It did not exactly light the landscape around them, but gave Sarah's eyes some dark suggestion of outline and shape. The crystal lowered, the light concentrating the closer it got to the ground. There was still no color to the world, but Sarah could definitely see what was around them for about ten feet. A wall of stone, floor of stone, a large urn with a mocking face carved into it, and steps leading up...

"We're in the Labyrinth," Sarah exclaimed, and swiveled her head around, peering into the darkness with some strange, sad hope of finding something familiar, now that she knew where she was.

"Yes," Jareth said. He sounded hollow, as if the sight of his kingdom had scooped out something important from inside him. Everything beyond the meager reach of Jareth's light was black. Not the slightest shine from water or glass, not the tiniest difference between the sky and the earth. Only death, only silence, as far as the eye could see. Sarah shivered. There was a faint smell in the air that raised all the hairs on the back of her neck. As if some slight echo of horror and loss still lingered. The scent of despair hung heavy in the air, and when Jareth brought the softly glowing crystal down between them, Sarah focused on it with desperate concentration.

Jareth brought his hands up as if warming himself in the light, and after a moment Sarah mimicked him. They huddled close to it, facing each other and doing their best to shut out the terrible truth all around them. Sarah wasn't sure what she'd expected, but this was...bad.

"It's so dark," she said, her voice hushed.

His mouth tightened into a smile that had very little humor in it. "It's the end of the world," he said. "It's always dark."

Sarah gave him an uncertain look. "Can you fix it?"

For a moment, Jareth's jaw worked silently. Then he nodded.

Sarah touched his arm. "Can I do anything?"

Jareth reached up and brushed her hair away from her face, his fingers skimming her cheek. It was an affectionate, intimate gesture, and despite their surroundings, Sarah suddenly felt warm and giddy.

"Not just yet," he said, and stepped back. He didn't bother, this time, telling her to shut her eyes. That particular realization made her pause.

She'd been so careful, over the years. There were unspoken rules for regular people among strange things and impossible places. Finding herself on the other side of those concerns was...odd.

Then Jareth tensed, and Sarah felt her heart thud hard in her chest as the world around her developed a stutter. It was like watching a reel of film that had caught in the projector, but it was the whole labyrinth around her.

Jareth staggered slightly, then braced himself better, standing with his legs further apart, knees bent. As if he was just getting started. Sarah felt a shiver and broke out in goosebumps. There was a surreal kind of tension in the air, something under enormous strain stretching to its limit, and then further.

The stone cracked under her feet with a gunshot. The sound spread out, like ice on a lake threatening to break. Popping, crunchy, 'oh shit' sounds. Sarah looked around her at the stone with wide eyes, frozen with the thought that the place she was standing was as safe as any other. The ground bucked under her, heaving up and down once, as if some vast giant beneath the earth had taken a breath. The ground cracked as it rose, falling back down as chunks of stone. Sarah's heart clenched tight in her chest as she rode the wave, and she flinched and gritted her teeth as she headed for a nasty re-introduction to the earth.

The ground split before her, and she continued to fall. On and on into nothing, the rest of the labyrinth seeming to join her on the way down, big sections of floor tumbling past her into darkness.

She waited. Nothing happened. Experimentally, she shut her eyes, then opened them again. She would have jumped at the change, if she'd had anything to jump off of.

Sarah opened her eyes to daylight, or something like it. Light, anyway. She dropped down neatly onto a chunk of stone floor (or possibly wall) that was sort of floating in nothing, as if gravity was a friend that occasionally looked the other way where she was concerned. There were other chunks of labyrinth hanging around in the air like Christmas decorations dangling from an invisible tree.

Sarah had been here, before. Or at least, someplace very like it.

"This is not as easy as it looks, you know," came a voice from behind her. Sarah spin around, relief high in her chest.

Jareth was pale and washed out, and looked absolutely exhausted. His clothes were rather...feathery, as if he was halfway to being an owl. Sarah looked around at the floating bits of labyrinth all around them.

"Ah," she said, "didn't quite work, did it?"

Jareth gave her a wry look. He lifted a hand as if to gesture her in close. Sarah stepped forward quickly, curious. He slipped his arms around her in a way that implied he wasn't sure if she would allow it. Sarah bumped him affectionately with her hip, oddly comfortable with him. Some little voice inside her whispered _my monster_.

Jareth dropped any pretense, leaning all over her.

Sarah grunted, startled, and braced her feet. Jareth was breathing hotly against her neck, which under other circumstances would be very nice. He said something against her skin that she couldn't catch, and she made a questioning sound. Jareth got his feet more firmly under him, which was a good thing, and pulled back to look her in the face.

"I said," he repeated, "that's better." Then he kissed her.

It was brief, and sweeter than it had any right to be, given the fact that Sarah was beginning to think Jareth was using her like some kind of battery. He pulled back, looking flushed, and Sarah leaned all over him this time, trying desperately to find her presence of mind.

"Um," she managed, failing for the moment to find it. "Dangerous stuff."

Jareth grinned at her with sharp teeth. He looked immeasurably better. Sarah spied her rational mind, hiding behind her libido, and a few things clicked into place.

"I've still got some of you, don't I? Some of that power I shouldn't have." she said shrewdly, though it was somewhat ruined by the fact that Jareth was still essentially holding her up.

Jareth gave her an amused once-over. "Well, you're not dead," his arms tightened around her briefly, "something I would prefer to avoid." His voice warmed, grew more intimate. "I'm sure I can learn to live with the situation as it stands."

Sarah made a pleased sound against his chest.

"Even though you're still quite foolish, and a bit slow to catch on," he added wickedly, and Sarah stiffened, pushing away from him in outrage.

At which point she noticed they were standing on the ground. The ground-ground. Dirt under their feet, and below them, at the bottom of the hill, gleaming just slightly in the not-sunlight...

The labyrinth spread out, the castle beyond the goblin city rising up in the distance.

"Oh," Sarah said, and then grinned broadly, actually bouncing on her toes in sheer delight. "Oh-Hoggle, Lugo-" she turned to him with light in her heart. "Jareth, are they here? Are they okay? Can I see them?"

Jareth raised his chin and looked down at her. "Perhaps I can arrange something," he said, a smile playing around his lips. "But not here. Not now."

Sarah frowned. "Why-"

Jareth tapped her once between the eyes. "Think," he said simply. Sarah blinked, startled. He didn't look superior-well, he didn't look any more superior than he usually did-so she decided against a smart remark.

Well, he'd done as he said he would, and turned back time on his world. So that meant, what? Sarah flashed suddenly on that chunk of floor floating in nothing, on Jareth looking pale and feathered, and started to wonder.

"How far..." Sarah frowned, and looked down at the labyrinth as if she could tell just by looking, "how far back did you go? Not...not all the way? This isn't-"

"The day you won?" Jareth said delicately.

Sarah's eyes went wide. "Then, they just saw me. They're-"

"Up there with you right now," Jareth said quietly, nodding at the sky, "celebrating, leaving footprints and chicken feathers and I shudder to think what else, all over your bedroom."

Sarah gave him an odd look. She remembered finding unidentifiable bits of trash and fur all over her room the next day. Months later, following a thorough cleaning, she'd found somebody's tooth on top of her bookshelf, along with what had looked like a bird's nest full of eggs.

"I have experience," Jareth said with a delicate shudder. "You would be amazed what I've found in the least likely places."

The eggs had hatched into tiny crocodiles.

Sarah snickered.

"So what do we do?" she asked. Jareth looked very pleased about that 'we'. He stepped very close to her, leaning in to speak into her ear.

"Close your eyes," he breathed.

"I thought I was past that," Sarah said with a shiver. Jareth started to nibble on her ear, and she hissed in a sharp breath.

"Leave them open, then, if you like that better," Jareth said, his voice promising filthy, filthy, wonderful things.

Jareth's tongue flicked out, tracing along the outer edge of her ear, and Sarah shut her eyes with a sigh. Jareth laughed, low and throaty, and vanished.

Sarah stumbled forward, and caught herself on her kitchen counter. She blinked down at it under her fingers for a minute, and then started cursing.

She was standing in her apartment, and Jareth was a rotten tease-

Sarah stopped, and slowly spun around. She was in her apartment. It was spotless. Her windows were unbroken, the curtains pulled back and the blinds drawn up to let in the fading evening light. Her door was solid and unmarred, the wards all pristine and un-smoldering. She sniffed experimentally. There wasn't even any lingering hint of brimstone. The clutter she'd left in the hall was gone, the closet neatly shut.

"Well," she said, rather impressed despite herself, "he can clean."

"Who can?" said somebody, opening her bedroom door.

Sarah gaped for a spit second, and then squealed in delight, running across her living room and tearing down the hall.

"Hoggle!" she cried, going down on her knees and throwing her arms around him.

"Don't kiss me!" he exclaimed, alarmed. "He still hadn't got over that one!"

"My lady?"came a hesitant voice from inside her room, and she grinned, throwing the door wide. Sir Didymous got very flustered when she kissed him on the nose, but then she saw Ludo over by the bed, and threw herself into his arms, letting the little knight off the hook.

Sarah buried her face in Ludo's fur and abruptly, she was crying.

"Sarah sad?" he asked, concerned.

"Oh, no, Ludo, I'm just," Sarah pressed her face back into his fur, sniffling. "I'm just so glad to see you guys."

"You saw us last week," Hoggle said doubtfully. "Is this one of those women's things?"

Sarah laughed out loud. She turned, scrubbing her face.

"No, I just haven't-" Sarah stopped, startled. She _had_ seen them last week. And the week before that. They'd played Pictionary against the goblins and won, since apparently the goblins could only draw chickens. And something that looked vaguely like Jareth in a dress, though from the reactions of the other goblins, Sarah got the impression that particular drawing was a bit treasonous. Sarah remembered it happening. But she also remembered the one night when they stopped coming. She remembered hoping, and eventually, giving up. She remembered a knock on her door in the middle of the night, and a Goblin King she learned to care about-

"Are you all right, dear lady?" Sir Didymous asked kindly.

"I don't-yes," Sarah replied. She looked around, out of sorts and half wishing the Goblin King would step out from behind a piece of her furniture. "Yeah, I'm okay," she sighed.

"There was supposed to be punch and pie tonight," Hoggle said hopefully.

The funny thing was, Sarah remembered that he was right.

"Yeah," she replied, straightening with a firm nod. "I'll just go see what I've got."

There was, of course, a pumpkin pie and a dutch apple, which Sarah remembered buying earlier in the day. Also a fizzy punch made with ginger ale and fruit juice. Plastic cups, plastic forks, and paper plates, since the goblins were invited and Sarah wasn't about to replace all her dishes _again_ for like the fifth freaking time.

Sarah set everything out, and went to place the wrappers and boxes in the trash. There were bloody paper towels in the trash. Sarah stared at them for a long minute, feeling both sets of memories sort of fighting with each other in her head.

Someone knocked at the door. A simple, non-desperate, just-a-friend-here-to-say-hello kind of knock. Sarah set the stuff in the trash and went to answer it, waving Hoggle back from the pie and towards the bedroom, just in case it was someone normal.

She flipped the latch and swung the door wide, wondering if goblins had learned to knock. Miracles could happen, after all.

On the other side of the door stood the Goblin King. He was leaning on the door frame. Sarah stared at him, confusion and alarm fighting a good battle with pleasure and relief.

"It's been...a long time," Sarah said hesitantly. Because it had been...she was almost sure...

"Has it?" the Goblin King asked her, sounding tense. She watched his fist clench on the door frame. He looked suddenly, desperately hopeful.

"I'm having a little trouble with this," Sarah said honestly.

"Invite me in?" he asked quietly. He glanced up, as if looking at something out of sight, just above her door. "Friend?" he ventured.

_Speak, friend, and enter..._

Sarah swallowed hard, as one set of memories rolled over the other set with a resounding thud.

"Clever of you," she said, and stepped aside. Jareth poked his nose inside like a hesitant cat. Sarah gave him a warm look and took his hand, pulling him in. Her wards didn't so much as flicker. "It's a puzzle, you got it right," Sarah reassured. She smiled slightly. "Guess you can get in any time you like, now."

Jareth approached her as if she might scream and run at any moment. He took her arms gently, warily, as if she might have an iron poker hiding somewhere nearby and wasn't afraid to use it. Sarah leaned close, resting her hands on his chest in casual intimacy, and he relaxed all at once. She remembered him, for the moment. Sarah could still feel the heavy press of everything else she remembered, as if the new memories were upset by her reluctance to forget.

"You may regret saying that. I'll need to stay close for a while, or you'll lose everything we did." Jareth hesitated. "Unless you'd rather forget."

Sarah frowned at him, pushing back, but Jareth continued persuasively.

"It will be safer for you. Life isn't always easy for The Girl Who Saw too Much," he reminded her. Sarah paused, trying hard to think, and knowing that at the moment, she wasn't doing all that great with it.

"I like you," she said, and Jareth puffed up adorably. "And I like me." She paused. "The me I was, I mean. I don't want to forget that." Or what it felt like to...say...kiss the Goblin King. Not to mention what it felt like to do other things with him.

"So..." Jareth prompted, looking warm and pleased.

"So," Sarah said firmly, and smiled. "Stay."

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Several goblins step forward, and the one in front starts to speak._

"_And so this is the end of the very short story, of how King came to Sarah's game night one time for no reason at all, and everyone had a good time except for two goblins wot got bogged for treason during Pictionary, and Hedgewort, who's still kinda nervous around King."_

_(there is muffled whispering amongst the goblins for a moment)_

"_Punch and pie," the goblin adds, doubtfully. A pair of goblins in the back give a thumbs-up._

_Tiny Jareth, quite overcome, claps enthusiastically. The author sniffles and dabbs at her eyes with a glittery hankie.  
_

_scriptrix-scriptorum- Slack for Jareth, as requested._

_Ice Demon Ranger- yes, you've discovered my evil plan to not let either of them out of Sarah's apartment until they consented to shag each other :)_

_cu-kid- MWA-HA-HA!_

_Lixxle- of COURSE Jareth was still naked. Jeez. You think I'd pass up a golden opportunity like that? There should be some kind of challenge, I think. A Jareth-needs-to-be-nude-the-whole-time challenge. He could be trapped above and need to hide in Sarah's shrubbery, or something. Man, I'm tired._

_Mirra Mirra- oh, ye of little faith...and I gotta say, I've kept that line about 'explody jareth' because it made me snicker when I wrote it. I thought it was funny, so everyone else gets to suffer. :)_

_JewelValentine- so glad you are pleased!_

_CoffeeKris- (hugs back)_

_Liben ist Magie- well done, clever girl. For your prize, I have this...erm...tribble. Don't feed it. (I've been over in Star Trek for a while now, I'm afraid.)_

_I am taking a poll. Anybody care to read a 'Lady and the Knight' sequel? Just curious, nobody throw any vegetables at me...  
_


End file.
